Gosh, you were well ahead of me. My first exposure to fandom was about 13 years ago, when one of my flatmates at uni introduced me to Robin of Sherwood. The internet was still in its infancy of Geocities and Angelfire, and we only had access to it in the university computer lab, but we found a discussion group for RoS on Yahoo Groups - and then a roleplay game for it. (She wrote a fantastic Sheriff.) After that, I didn't really know fandom existed until 2005. The year I broke my foot was the year I found Firefly, fanfic and slash, started writing, and a year later I went to my first con.