I first started using Perl about two years ago. My boss asked me if I could write a (slightly spamish) program that could read/update a SQL database and send and receive email. Since I was bucking to move up from phone support, I told him,
"No problem. I can do it in Perl."

So that night, I picked up a copy of O'Reilly's Learning Perl 2nd Ed. (Schwartz, Christiansen & Wall) and started learning to code in what has since become my favorite language. Two weeks later, I turned in a finished program and I've been writing small s‎crip‎ts & large programs in Perl ever since.