I don't know why i'm having such a hard time with Perl...Iv'e read and read and it just flies through my brain!

It sounds like you're doing wrong what I do wrong:  Read too much and code too little. It's my worst bad habit. This is precisely why I tried to help you a bit by refactoring your code. Study each of the changes I made very carefully, asking yourself "Why did he do that?" for each one. I promise you you'll learn several helpful lessons.

Are you using a good programmer's text editor with Perl syntax highlighting? If not, do. One of the obvious problems you're having is with trivial syntax errors (i.e., typos). A good Perl text editor will help you avoid these.

I am using notepad++ as I use this to create web pages using html and css. since it had Perl editing i didn't want to download something else at the time.

Notepad++ should work nicely. It's a fine programmer's editor. I don't use it, but people I know and respect do.

Mind your block-delimiting braces.