What started you on the merry go round?

Forgive me if this is an old thread, but can you look back and say a particular event, experience, got you started? For some it may be your Dad, perhaps attending a show, or a friend.
For me it was sometime in the Autumn of 1977. I had just started in my first residency job in the National Health Service in Devon. Ian a fellow serf in the hospital trenches had a pretty good system for the time and his salary, Linn LP12/SME 309/Shure, Monitor Audio speakers, I can'nt remember the rest. I was getting into Opera then and he played the Beecham version of Puccini's La Boheme, I bought the set about this time and it is still the first record I would rescue in a fire. It was the entry of Mimi in Act 1, scene 1. Victoria De Los Angeles was perfect on that record and it was as if an angel had come into the room. Well that was it for me and I started the long, hesitant road to where I am now, with a long gap when the kids were young.
Did any of you guys have a similar "epithany"