This is late, as many others have already shared their stories, but here's the short story on how I got into computers.
In the neighborhood I grew up in, I was apparently be labeled "at risk." Probably would have been vote most likely to be convicted of a white-collar crime. One day there was some kind of parent-teacher-school district superintendant meeting and they decided if we don't give this kid something to do, we're going 'lose him.' So, my fifth grade teacher let my dad and I borrow the Apple II computer over the weekends. I started using friends' TI89/A's and spent more than one weekend typing and printing a 20 page (20 pages of 8x11 ASCII ) poster of Mister Spock on a TRS/Trash80.
Then, a few months later, the parents sold our van to buy me a Commodore 64, and a few copies of COMPUTE! magazine pretty much insured I'd be indoors for life.
Fast forward 5 years (various operating systems I used described here in an earlier unrelated post) and I was selling my services (which consisted of a complex 'document recovery' racket at local high schools [né 'business'] as Tweak Inc. running entirely off a single copy of Norton Disk Doctor).
Fast forward a few more years and I was running Tweak Computer Support and BBS and programming Win16 apps in C.
Fast forward a few more years and I sell Don Box a Newton on opening day.
Fast forward a bit more and you can find me posting on USENET from nike.com.
Fast forward <10 years and I'm working at Corillian Corporation and blogging with you fine people. And it all started with my fifth grade teacher letting me type 'CATALOG' into an Apple II.