“I want to have a watch party,” my son Noah announced last Friday, his voice carrying a mix of authority and supplication. Auburn football, naturally. We’d hosted these gatherings before when the Tigers ventured away from Jordan-Hare Stadium.

Saturday afternoon: The boys materialized one by one at our door – six, seven, perhaps eight adolescent souls draped in orange and blue, their faces earnest with the hope of true believers.

I phoned Papa John’s, ordering an armada of Shaq-A-Roni pizzas, having witnessed these creatures devour food with the ravenous intensity of raccoons in a dumpster. Poor Gabriela, my daughter, nearly 12 and the evening’s sole female, observed this masculine invasion with bemused tolerance.

Our covered veranda, typically a serene sanctuary overlooking the lake and

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