Minecraft and how we came to play it

Well seeing as its been a question I have thought about a lot recently I'm wondering how it is that we all came to play this strange block game that so many people are in love with.

My Story:
Well for me minecraft all started over at a friends how when I saw him playing it. I was so confused as to what he was doing but it looked so cool. I eventually ended up getting a Minecraftsp and played around and loved the game. I started playing back in late 2010 when the game was still mostly alpha and just starting beta. I got my premium account 2 July, 2011. I wont even get started as to why I picked my username. I been playing on winter's servers from if I remember correctly beta 1.7.2. I started off right off the bat as a mod thanks to a few friends at school who talked winter into making me staff though he had no clue at the time who I was. From that day after I've been on winter's servers so I guess you can say i've been around for a while and see the server on its best and worst days. Here we are now post beta gearing up for 1.8.0.

Feel free to post your story as to how you got started on minecraft and how you ended up on the server.

Well me, similar to Amber, I saw my friend play it in 2012 and became interested. I was such a noob back then that I didn't even know that there was such thing as cracked accounts. I used to borrow a copy of my friend's launcher and sign in as some random player [dragonbeater87] or something I can't remember...
AnimalCraft was my first ever server and my username was copied from my YouTube name. Being a user like 70% of my life it was fun and so many things I have learnt. I never originally knew servers even requested for staff...nor did I know what mod was! Omfg... o//[]//o