A couple of years ago, when Clayton Schuetz was eight, he saw a commercial about boys with cancer wearing wigs made from girls' hair.

Yuck, he thought. They have to deal with cooties as well as chemo? That's just not fair.

So Clayton decided to grow out his own hair and donate it to Locks of Love, so some boy could have a wig made of boy hair. With his parents' permission, he stopped getting haircuts and started using detangling spray and, when he played soccer, headbands.

When his tresses reached the 10-inch minimum for Locks of Love, Clayton and his mom Cathy Schuetz decided it was time for a snip. So after school ended at Ivy Creek Elementary in Buford on Wednesday afternoon, Clayton got a haircut and Locks of Love got two light brown ponytails, flecked with blonde highlights.

"This is just beautiful hair," said hair stylist Pam King, who routinely cuts Cathy's hair at Profiles Hair Studio in Hoschton. "I've cut about a dozen people for Locks of Love, but I've never cut a boy before. He's doing a great thing."

It wasn't easy growing out his hair for more than year and half, said Clayton, who's in the 4th grade. As his hair passed his shoulders, he learned to put up with being mistaken for a girl, at the movies and sometimes on the soccer field.

If his two older brothers and his father teased him, he just smiled. When a waiter brought his food first, thinking Clayton was a girl, he didn't correct him.

Clayton became accustomed to his long hair and learned to wash and brush it. But he said he got tired of it getting in his face when he ate and when he played soccer. And he was tired of waking up with bed head.

On Wednesday, he sat as still as a rock while King worked on him in the school's science lab. He kept his eyes squeezed shut while she snipped and cut and combed his hair, feeling the strands fall into his lap. When she finished, King held up a mirror for him to examine her work.

"Wow," Clayton said, his blue eyes widening. He reached up and touched the back of his head. "This feels weird."