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Sure, he’s a jolly roger

Until he answers for his crime

Yes, I’ll match him whim for whim now

-Steely Dan, “My Rival”

I share a good, hearty rivalry with a friend of mine. This December, he executed a masterful whim.

Our rivalry all started a few years after college when our respective high school football teams were put in the same district.

We started attending the games together every year. Things really heated up one year when my team somehow overcame a 21-point deficit in about a minute and a half to win the game. It was then when my friend coined an infamous phrase: hometown timekeeper. These were, of course, fighting words.

Trash talk and heckling crept into our friendship. There were taunting phone calls before the yearly game, gloating calls afterwards.

One year my team beat his on their turf, a rare feat in our over-hyped rivalry. I took it upon myself to find some salt for his wound.

And that’s how our rivalry’s first caper was conceived.

It was well after midnight, and I cut the headlights off as my car rolled to a silent stop in front of his house. The neighbors all slept, utterly unaware of the despicable plan I’d set in motion. I worked silently, my silhouette a sinister shadow to anyone foolish

enough to peek out their window. My task was complete in less than 10 minutes, and then I was gone, vanished into the night.

My friend would wake the next morning as usual, his loving kids no doubt jumping on the bed in good, Saturday morning spirits. He certainly would have shuffled down the driveway in slippers to get the paper, which would contain the heartbreaking score of his alma mater’s demise.

But he wouldn’t need the newspaper this day. All the information he needed was right there, scrawled on his driveway in enormous, multi-colored letters and digits. His personal mural of misery, his driveway of pain. In sidewalk chalk.

He never fully recovered from it.

Eventually, our teams’ district was carved up and they went their separate ways. But this past December, his team—you’ve come this far, so you should know their name—the Lutcher Bulldogs—won the state championship. It was their fifth in recent memory, something my beloved E.D. White Cardinals cannot claim.

My wife woke up first that Sunday morning, returned from getting the newspaper and asked, “Why is there a sign that says “Go Bulldogs, go fight win” in our front yard?”

Same reason a grown man slows his SUV on a dark, Lutcher street.

Same reason his wife, a polite elementary school teacher and mother of three, hops out and steals a sign from a yard.

Same reason the unnoticed deputy parked across the street just nods as the criminals drive off.

Why? Because there are some things you’ve just gotta do.