For Nehemiah Davis, the perfect haircut is no haircut at all.
But on Monday, he will start first grade at a new school.
His mother, Erica Davis, has plans for the coils haloing her son’s head.
Haircuts are expensive, she said, so on Friday Davis and other parents brought their kids to a makeshift salon set up at Tampa-based personal injury law firm Boohoff Law.
Every year before school starts, the law practice hosts a school supply drive in the parking lot of its South Seminole Heights office. This year, employees at the firm partnered with three local stylists to offer free haircuts.
“It felt natural to combine the two,” said Tatiana Boohoff, the firm’s founder. The company left brochures at schools but most parents of the 10 children who got their hair cut Friday evening found out about the event on social media.
Three stylists set up in the office’s narrow entryway. Within 30 minutes of the 6 p.m. start, Boohoff’s son Dennis brought in additional chairs to accommodate the growing number of families waiting their turn.
Stylist Kiyha Hill clicked on pop music and the buzz of hair clippers filled the room.
Children and parents often have different opinions about what makes a good haircut, Boohoff said. The battle of wills played out Friday evening.
Mohamed Ghaffari and his brother Yassine insisted they keep the curling plumage that crowned their heads, foiling their father’s preference for buzz cuts.
One of the last haircuts of the night for barber Mario Eargood was Hridhaan Jain, a 7-year-old boy who squealed and squirmed and begged his father to let them leave before the haircut was done.
Eargood darted around the boy, scooping abundant hair between his fingers and snipped in the lulls between the boy’s protests.
What is it like to cut children’s hair?
“Miserable,” Eargood said. People tell him barbers should charge less for children. Eargood thinks the opposite.
When Erica Davis lived in Philadelphia, she took Nehemiah to a barber. They left with only half of Nehemiah’s hair trimmed. He was over it, and she didn’t want to cause a scene in public.
On Friday, he climbed on a high chair when his turn came. Eargood draped a sheet over him like a server spreading a white tablecloth at a fine dining restaurant.
Nehemiah got a Boosie fade, a style that leaves hair at the top of the head and gets shorter, tapering off closer to the neck. For some Boosie fades, the taper goes so high that hair remains only at the top, leaving the nape bald.
“How high do you want me to go?” Eargood asked Nehemiah, who shrugged and hummed I don’t know with his mouth closed. Eargood looked up at Nehemiah’s mom. “He didn’t want to get it cut, huh?”
Eargood loosened Nehemiah’s curls with an Afro pick. Next came the electric clippers. Eargood tilted Nehemiah’s head down and sheared the back with a flicking wrist.
No protests today. The 6-year-old kept his head dutifully bent. He looked up at his mom with big brown eyes and grinned.
