Snowdog, those categories are great - but I'm disappointed I'm not considered true 'old school'
At least I'm one of the first-born though. I first read Tolkien way back in 1982/3, first the Hobbit, then LOTR, then straight onto the Sil and Unfinished Tales, and then onto whatever I could find in the library. I was only12 when I read it. My brother got the books and he loved them, and I thought, 'this has got to be cool if my brother likes it'. So I pinched them from him.
I used to have to sneak the books into school, where I constructed a little hidey hole to go and read in. It was under a pile of those old metal-framed chairs with the canvas seats, which had been piled up in a store room. I took a long time to read it because I did not want it to end and kept going back to parts I found particularly good. I also used to draw pictures of scenes in the books, one which springs to mind was Boromir's death scene. My mum must still have that somewhere as we are a hoarding family.
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Everyone had the books in college and many had posters plastered on their dorm or apartment walls -- usually the psychedelic one done by Barbara Remington that JRRT couldn't stand! We even had pins that said "Gandalf for President".
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Child - I am jealous. You might laugh at this, but when I read Tolkien I developed this obsession with all things late sixties/early seventies, and accumulated a large number of like-minded friends. This was the 80s, and we would go round listening to Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, early (Gabriel-era) Genesis, Fairport Convention.....We used to write Frodo Lives on everything. And we were considered peculiar.
By the time I got to university - 1989 - Tolkien was sadly considered for geeks, especially to my fellow English students, and I struggled to find anyone who would openly admit to being a fan. Still, me and my goth flatmate were of like minds. We once went to join a uni sci-fi/fantasy society and ran away because all the young men there scared us. Not because we were scared of young men, au contraire, but these were scary men. It was all very Mike Leigh.
