The Haim to My Feldman

When I was young, just a lad, I had a birthday party. It was more of a sleepover, really. I had two distinct groups of friends at the time--there were Nick and Chris, who were cousins and who I'd met when I was five and who I had long played G.I. Joe with; and there were Jimmy and Peter, who I'd just met in the third grade. Peter was down with G.I. Joe, but Jimmy was cooler than that, so now I was too. Jimmy and watched the Lost Boys together and daydreamed of being the Frog Brothers, out figthing vampires. Jimmy was a Haim kind of guy, I was a Feldman, and sweet, sweet Patty Mayfield was our Heather Graham.

The sleepover was a bit of a bungle. these two groups had never come together before, and here I was trying to make something quite unnatural happen. My plans for a D&D game fizzled and the Nerf basketball tournament downstairs fell apart when Jimmy and Peter decided they'd rather play pool. So we were all up in my room and the groups were separated--Jimmy and Peter going through tapes and picking out music to play, Nick and Chris going through G.I. Joe figures. I was perched on the edge of my bed, feeling a little down.

"Hey," Jimmy said. I looked up from my newly nine-year-old brood.

"What?"

"You know, wearing that plain white t-shirt, and sitting there like that . . . you kind of look like Corey Feldman, actually."

"Really?"

"Yeah. Doesn't he, Pete?"

Peter agreed. Which got the three of us to talking about the Lost Boys, and then to vampires, which got Chris interested because his uncle, who smoked pot all day long in Chris's basement, had turned him on to the idea of vampire ladies being sexy. Nick, with no one to play G.I. Joe with, joined the conversation too. I was sent out to the living room to see if it was all clear for us to start watching movies yet. Our plan was approved and the Lost Boys was first up, then Monster Squad. We played vampire hunters as quietly as we could in the living room, Jimmy giving over the role of the Other Frog Brother so that he could, then and forevermore, be the Haim to my Feldman.