I used to be a big 70's-80's rock fan; I remember enjoying Deep Purple, Def Leppard and ZZ Top when I was in middle school, but I wasn't very strongly into music until my parents bought me an Mp3 player for Christmas.
I had wanted a ZZ Top album but they didn't like the lyrics all that much - and so instead they got me the Mp3 player and an emusic card. Now emusic had basically none of what I wanted because it was a fairly small site that apparently the big-name acts didn't patronize. I remembered hearing 'Enter Sandman' and thinking it was the coolest thing I'd heard at that point, so I found myself a cover of that and a couple of Triumph songs.
So still about $55 to spend on the card; I looked at music lists where Triumph featured and discovered Star One, which I remember enjoying.
However, when perusing the lists I came across Battlelore's 'Sons of Riddermark', which became my new favorite song for a while. Apparently Battlelore was power metal, so I looked for more of that and came across HammerFall; when I pursued the prog line I found Threshold, and my love for metal sprang from there!
My mom has been kicking herself ever since.