This is how I was also nearly expelled from high school.

I published with some friends in ninth grade a satirical underground paper called Yo’ Mama that sent up the administration, teachers, world events and the like. It was, as the subtitle went, “Rude, Crude, and Socially Unacceptable.”

We sold each copy for fifty cents each and it became something of a hit for a few months. I was a good writer, and a few other people who had a real ear for comedy luckily agreed to work with me in its production.

Of course, the paper and everything in it incensed the administration and one day I was called into a meeting with two different principals (one from the so-called ninth grade center and one from the main high school) and several other very important muckity-mucks. I was told in no uncertain terms to halt publishing and distribution of Yo’ Mama immediately or be expelled.

Having no other real choice, I agreed to stop publication and then had to break the news to my collaborators that day. We were proud of ourselves, though. We’d put out a product that people wanted and were willing to pay for and that was true and good enough that it caused such a ruckus. We worked hard on it, too. Many late nights writing, collating, binding and all the other tasks that must be done when you need hundreds of copies of something.

What I hadn’t realized, though, is that the paper had spread to the main high school en masse somehow so when I started there the next year everyone already knew who I was. “Hey, hey, aren’t you Mike? The dude who published Yo’ Mama? Man, that shit was funny, had me laughing my ass off in class.” And similar things I’d get in the hallway or at lunch; dozens of kids coming up to tell me how hilarious they thought Yo’ Mama was and wishing I could still publish it.

That paper coincided with me attempting to improve myself in other ways, so it was very fortuitous timing. I hadn’t even started at the main high school and I was already a mini-legend when I walked in the door for publishing a paper that everyone had loved and that had nearly gotten me expelled.

Yo’ Mama wasn’t the only thing that changed my life right about then, but it certainly helped a great deal. Reputation is like capital. It builds on itself and walking into a brand new school already being known as a rebel publisher of an unjustly-banned paper certainly didn’t hurt matters.