I had Lego as a child, but it was the basic stuff and I don't have too much of a memory of it.
Then when I was 25 I suddenly got a hankering for a Lego castle, which my parents duly got for me for Christmas: King's Castle.
I loved it, but for some reason I didn't follow up with more purchases of my own. I would look at the sets available and think: "That would be cool!" But I wouldn't actually buy. And it never occured to me that sets would be discontinued

BFF, and Knight's Stronghold when they first came out.
A few years later in 1991 I got engaged. I was also living with a family whose kids had a boat-load (and I mean a boat-load) of Lego. My passion for building was kick-started again. I made a Sopwith Camel sized bi-plane. My fiancee gave me an engagement gift: Forestmen's Crossing. And on my wedding day my groomsmen gave me Black Knight's Castle. I was on my way!
I continued to pick up a set here, a set there, but it wasn't until 1997 that I became aware of a web pressence for things Lego. The first site I became aware of was Jeff Crites' page, now archived here. WARNING TO YOUNGSTERS: This is a pre-html ASCII formatted page! Before viewing, you may want to have a parent nearby to offer grief counselling. As best I can figure, Jeff had left the hobby by the time I found this page, but if Google is of any use I think this is him today. Note: I'm making no political statement here, just sharing information. I don't know if he won.
Back to Lego. It was from Jeff's page that I learned of RTL (rec.toys.lego), a message board for Lego enthusiasts. I made my first trade there, sending a partial Space set to a fellow in CA for castle stuff. In retrospect I think I came out with the short end of the stick on that one, but I was a novice and I was pleased with what I got. On RTL I learned of some fellow named Todd Lehman

Then this fellow Todd announced that he had created a new portal called LUGNet. For a while I 'double-dipped', lurking on LUGNet and posting on RTL. But eventually I went LUGNet-only. For the most part I hung out in .Castle, .BST, and .Auction. In the last one I learned of eBay, and I started using that to augment my collection. House rule where I live: outside of gifts, my Lego purchases are limited to what I can raise by selling Lego and other 'past-life' paraphenalia that I know longer need.
On .BST I learned of a new site for buying/selling bricks: BrickBay. I watched it grow (I'm not an 'early adapter'), and once prices came down I started buying. Today (after legal action threatened by eBay) you know this site as BrickLink.

I watched from the side-lines on LUGNet as a variety of attempts were made to make a separate on-line community for Lego Castle, including CastleWorld and Isle of Mist. When the announcement was made about the launch of Classic-Castle, I must admit that my first reaction was along the lines of "oh crud, now the community is going to be divided". I watched quietly as the new site developed (remember, I'm not an early adapter), and when I realized this was quite a viable endeavour, I took the plunge and signed up.
Again, I double-dipped for quite a while with LUGNet, but now I seldom go there, except for set references and tracking down old sites (for ObG).
And so here I am, content in my little corner of the web, chatting with all of you, building when I can, and most of all....
having fun.

Thanks for reading this far. I guess it's hard to stop once I get going!
Alan