How I got into Perl is actually a slightly funny story. At the time, circa 1991, I was doing a lot of X-Windows development and so had already fallen in love with O'Reilly . I was perusing their new catalog and ordering some books. I ordered 'Sed and Awk' because I was doing a lot of misc. shell programming and 'Programming Perl' because it looked cool and I like learning new languages.
The two books arrived in the same package. I picked up the camel book first; the 'Sed and Awk' book remains on my bookshelf to this day, unopened.
Perl, and the philosophies around it map directly onto the way I think. I instantly fell in love with the language. 11 years later we are still happily married.

-pete
"Worry is like a rocking chair. It gives you something to do, but it doesn't get you anywhere."