I found a 300 baud modem at a yard sale, the owner let me have it for $1.
Proceeded to crack open the family computer (a 386sx-33 with 4 megs of ram and a 80 mb hard drive) and found a long spool of telephone cable and connected, only to realize that I had no idea what number to call or how to dial out.
I learned how to use telnet by reading the massive 800 page Dos 5.0 instruction manual and in a copy of the yellow pages I found the number to a local BBS (generic Sherlockian starting point provided courtesy of a "Computer Shoppers" magazine) and dialed in.
Man, that was electric.
Being a dumb kid with a screwdriver and just the unbridled desire to make something happen and suddenly seeing bits and blobs of ascii characters appearing on my screen from dozens of miles away... man. That just can't be beat. I feel like even the air smelled different during those moments, like if electric copper and possibility were an odor that crawled out of the nether, summoned by the buzzing harmonies of the modem.
Reading the anarchists cookbook was a blast. It seemed so real and so full of BS at the same time. Oh, you can make drugs out of banana peels? Sure, yeah, ok. Not gonna do that, lol.
I think my favorite game to play was Usurper. it was LORD but with drugs and cyberpunk PK violence, and if you killed the current king you became the king. It was rough and gritty, pretty perverted, and perfect for a teenager who just wanted to play on the edge, lol.
Part of me wishes I could experience it all over again. I was the only person I knew who was "jacked in". It was great.