Hey, all you guys have great answers and I really enjoyed listening to your stories. I only wished I had someone to guide me when I was young.
I feel for you Canis Major. I'm the opposite. I have many friends, but, not a whole lot that I could have a good conversation with (most people my age, these days, care about useless things). The problem for me is finding someone interested in the same things. Having a friend there makes things much easier.
I have to agree with Grich. I really want to create interactive worlds all from my imagination, and since games are the only thing that can do that (currently), I opted for C++ to gain knowledge of how games work. And just the feeling of creating a game makes it all worth while (man I can't wait for the future!).