Have you ever been given a nickname by your friends that you really don’t like, and have you ever been called that nickname for two-and-a-half or so years?

I have and let me tell you, it isn’t that fun. Back in middle school, I was a much different person than I am today.

One day on the way home from Pittsburgh, back in the seventh grade, I was listening to Skrillex’s song ‘Devil’s Den.’ I closed my eyes. I just let the music speak to me and by the end of the song I had a character in my head. It was pretty cool if you ask me. I could see him vividly, and when I got home I decided to draw it.

My biggest mistake was the fact that I drew it in my school notebook. After I was done, I just closed my notebook and forgot all about it. About a week or two later, I was in class and we had free time. I went to put my things away when my notebook fell out. To my dismay it opened up… to the exact page with that drawing.

One of my friends picked it up and looked at it. He laughed and called me a demon. Now I will admit what I drew did look like a demon alien type thing and it was titled, ‘The son of the demon lord.’ My friend then proceeded to show all the other people we were with the photo. They all started laughing, and I laughed too because I realized how ridiculous the picture was. I tried to explain but they didn’t listen.

I was now ‘Demon ExLee.’ I won’t lie there were sometimes I just fed into the nickname to amuse people. I used to watch Supernatural, a hit TV show, and I learned some pretty interesting things from it. Now I didn’t do anything that would be considered satanic but I did do some things that were sketchy. I got a lot of laughs and for awhile I didn’t mind.

But as I got older it became more and more annoying and it was no longer an inside joke. I was getting called ‘Demon ExLee’ in front of people I didn’t even know like that, which is a bad first impression. So I started ignoring it more and more, and I was getting annoyed more and more. But that only seemed to make it worse.

But eventually, like every good thing it began to fade. When we went to high school they stopped calling me that. Eventually it’s just one of those things that we reminisce about every once and awhile.