I was working on a bowl cut for a 10 years old when I saw a guy about 20 sitting in the chair just next to mine, where a young woman was acting as a hairdresser. I had never saw her before, so I am sure she was new at the academy and very inexperienced.

He was very good looking, black hair and you could tell he needed a haircut. He had his hair in a messy way. He asked for “La Mesa”, which means “The Table”, the Spanish name for a Flattop.

The hairdresser had no idea how to do that, so she asked the teacher. He instructed her to place the comb horizontally over the top of the customer head and to start cutting, taking care of leaving it totally flat.

I kept working on my own customer but from time to time I checked on my neighbor. After a while, I could see the guy was kind of worry. His haircut was not looking as a flattop, it seemed more like a crewcut

Anyway, I went back to my work and few minutes later I heard the hairdresser calling the teacher. I looked again to the guy and saw a white spot on the left side of the top of his head!! When the teacher arrived, he couldn’t believed. “How did you do that? why did you took off the clippers guard?” he asked. The girl answered she was trimming the neck and the sideburns and the teacher replied “and what the hell does it have to do the sideburns with the top?”

Now he took over the situation. He tried to make a very short flattop, cutting the remainging hair over the top. I saw him desperately trying to make a decent cut but the spot was still too obvious.

The customer was sweating. I don’t know if he was more angry or worried. He could see how the teacher kept cutting shorter and shorter. Finally, Nelson, the teacher gave up. He said that the only thing he could do was to make a cut named “The stadium”, I guess you would call it a flattop with a landing strip but the landing strip was huge. It is called the stadium because it looks like one, no hair over the top except for half an inch all around the crown.

Since he had it that short over the top, there was nothing to do about the sides and back. Nelson took the bare clippers and passed them first at the right side, where I could see how the white skin was showing as he moved up the clippers. Then he continued with the back and then with the left side.

When Nelson was finished, the poor customer was almost bald. The only hair remaining was the one that was left around the top. He didn’t look too bad, this guy was really handsome and in my opinion he looked fine. But he didn’t think so. He stood up with a very serious face and left. I am sure I won’t see him again!!