The small town of Pearl had been waiting for this day all year long. The sun tried to peek out from behind the clouds, but it had difficulty in doing so.
Slowly but surely, the city quietly awoke on that windy, cold Friday morning. The date was November 7th, 1997, and the city had waited 365 days for this particular Friday, and nothing was going to ruin it.
What made this day so special? Well, to put it in simple turns, it was the day the city of Pearl would virtually shut down. This day would be the second biggest event of the year for the simple, content Pearlians (Pearl Day being the biggest event). It was the day that would determine the fate of 11 particular people - those that played football at Pearl...It was the day the Pearl Pirates played the Brandon Bulldogs in high school football.
This year, however, it was more then just a football game. This year, Pearl had a record of 8-2, and Brandon was 6-4; both teams were playoff bound. This game was about more then allowing all the football playing graduates of Pearl a chance to relive the brightest point in their lives when they were on the field so many years ago; it was about more then just people betting their life savings, welfare checks and all, on a football game; it was about more then the big party afterwards when all the high school sluts get train-banged by the football team. This year, the Pearl - Brandon Game would determine who would be first in the Class 5A - Division 3.
In addition to the pressure of winning the Division, there was something even more important riding on this game...The fate of the Golden Egg. The Golden Egg is the most coveted trophy in all of Rankin County. In order to win the egg, either Pearl or Brandon must beat the other team three consecutive years, and Pearl was coming off of two straight losses to Brandon. This year, if Pearl lost, not only would 11 people be hunted down by a lynch mob and strung up in the town square to face the wrath of all those football playing Pearl Alumni, but The Golden Egg would be stripped from the High School Trophy Case and cast down into the depths of Brandon High School.
The small town waited anxiously for the afternoon to arrive, and eventually it did. Around 5pm that afternoon, the mass exodus to Brandon High School began, and by 7pm that night, there was over 7000 people packed into the Brandon High School football stadium. Rebel yells, air horns, and speech-slured drunks could be heard when Pearl came out on the field to stretch and warm up; the game would be underway in a few short minutes. Little did the Pearl Football Team know that an ominous pile of feces was looming in their not to distant future. They had no idea that they were about to be shat on...literally.
Once Pearl had cleared the field, it was time for "Bully", the Brandon mascot to make his grand enterance. You see, Brandon is the only football team in the entire state to have a real live mascot. This is mainly because no other football team in the state has a real live animal for its team (Louisville Bearcats, Warren Central Vikings, Stateline Snipes, Faulkner Flaming Lizards.) Bully was paraded around the field by one of the Brandon Cheerleaders, and everyone on the Brandon side of the field loved him. However, the cheerleader leading Bully around was obviously not too bright (no big shocker there), and she paraded Bully over to the Pearl side of the stadium. The calm sound of nature on that Friday night was pierced by the most hideous sound a human has ever laid ears on...the sound of three thousand drunks all trying to bark like a dog.
I guess poor ole Bully just could not handle all the excitment, and he let it go straight to his head...Or more correctly, straight to his ass. Bully hunkered down over the hash mark on the 21 yard line and dropped a pile that would have made the Ex-Lax company proud. Needless to say, the three thousand drunks on the Pearl side of the stadium thought this was the funniest thing that they had ever seen in their lives. What they did not know was that about 7 minutes into the fourth quarter of the game, one of Pearl's receivers would miss a crucial touchdown catch in a 14 - 14 game because he would slip in Bully's liquid excitment.
The game went on, and Pearl wound up losing in overtime. The final score was 21 Brandon, 14 Pearl. Later that night, screams and cries could be heard from the football playing Pearl Alumni as they used their bodies as sheilds to protect the Pearl Trophy case from the Brandonians who had come to take the Golden Egg back to Brandon.
In a way, you really have to feel sorry for the Pearl team. The day they had been waiting for for a year was ruined by a bulldog's excitment... and the dog barking of three thousand of the drunks that had come out to support them.
Many years down the road a new bunch of youngsters will be wearing those blue and gold Pearl jerseys, and the coaches will remind them of that fateful Friday back in 1997 when Pearl's chance to win the division, and keep The Golden Egg slipped out from underneath them because of "The Dog Who Could Not Wait."
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