Despite the suspected possible essay question from the OP — I just wanted to say how glad I am you went ahead and wrote this reply. As someone who is in the thick of studying OOP in Perl this was very helpful.

In particular, I've been studying closures this week. (Through perldoc perlref and the Camel book.) I've find it to be a really interesting technique that I suspected allows one to flirt with OOP without having to fully dive in. I'm still honestly having some trouble wrapping my head around it (let alone OOP in Perl) which I don't think will improve until I use it more regularly and make my first 999 mistakes. Your post did help clarify the way a little more. Again, thanks.