This is fan fiction. Every character, street, team and event in it is made up. No real league, team, player or game is involved, and nothing here happened.

Every first Sunday in November, the two ends of a cul-de-sac off Wekiva Springs Road settle the only thing that matters: who gets to park the boat trailer in the good spot until Easter.

The north end calls itself the Retention Ponds. The south end calls itself the Lanai Boys, even though two of them are named Debbie. The trophy is a spray-painted gold pool skimmer. It has been stolen four times, and once it was found in a canal.

This year the Retention Ponds had a secret weapon: Kyle, who played two snaps of junior varsity in 1999 and has talked about it ever since. Kyle showed up in a red tank top, eye black, and sunglasses pushed up on his head like a man who has never once been wrong.

The Lanai Boys had Grandpa Lou.

Grandpa Lou is eighty-one. Grandpa Lou does not run. Grandpa Lou sits in a woven lawn chair on the 30-yard line, which is a garden hose, and declares himself "a zone."

The referee was Dale, the HOA guy, in a striped shirt he bought specifically for this. Dale takes the whistle very seriously. Dale has issued a written warning for a mailbox that was "too cheerful."

First quarter, Kyle threw three touchdowns. All three went directly over Grandpa Lou's head. "He's in my airspace," Lou told Dale. Dale checked the bylaws. There is nothing in the bylaws about airspace.

Second quarter, things got hot. Literally. Someone had left the kettle grill on the patio with a full load of charcoal and a rack of ribs, and when Debbie number two went out for a deep post, she clipped one leg of it.

The grill did not tip. The grill rolled. Down the slope, past the pool, picking up speed, trailing smoke like a fighter jet in a movie.

And Biscuit saw it.

Biscuit is a golden retriever. Biscuit belongs to nobody on either team, and to everyone on the street. Biscuit has one goal in life, and that goal was now rolling across the end zone smelling like ribs.

Kyle, mid-throw, saw the grill coming. Kyle released anyway, because Kyle has never in his life not released. Dale leaped over the cooler. Grandpa Lou's chair tipped back so far he could see the Spanish moss.

The ball spun forty yards through the smoke, bounced off the grill lid with a hollow BONG, and landed perfectly in Grandpa Lou's lap.

Grandpa Lou looked down at it. Then up at Dale.

"Interception," said Lou. "I never left my zone."

Dale blew the whistle for a full eleven seconds. Then he ruled it good, because nobody on that street has ever won an argument with Lou, and Dale has to live there.

Biscuit got the ribs. The Lanai Boys got the gold skimmer. Kyle got a cold soda and a story he will tell until 2050.

The boat trailer is still in the good spot. Nobody remembers whose it is.