I was born in '82. I remember watching ESB and RotJ at home with my parents when I was probably about three years old. I somehow made a mess of ESB's plot -- Han was put in a refrigerator, there were multiple Darth Vaders and one was a robot that looked like Luke, and Yoda was Luke's old friend -- but I did better with RotJ. I knew all the Ewoks by name, and pointed them out during the battle. The Emperor, or Vader's father as I knew him, was really scary. The torture-by-lightning was painful to watch. But it's good for kids to see scary movies sometime, especially if the good guys win at the end. It's cathartic.
I pretty much ignored Star Wars until I played the X-wing PC game. Then I caught a trilogy marathon on USA and actually paid attention to it. I loved it. That's also where I developed some of my long-standing OT opinions, such as the importance of Han shooting first. It might not have been evident when there was a three year break between each movie, and it might not be fresh in the mind of George and the fanboys, but really watching the trilogy for the first time all in one night -- Han's arc was a real stand out, and ruthlessly frying Greedo is the only way to begin that arc.
Soon I delved into fandom, which was resurgent, but not yet popular. I slogged through Zahn's tortuous tomes and wasn't terribly impressed. A few other books from the local library didn't sell me on Star Wars literature, either. I found that I preferred (and still do) the shorter, punchier stories in the Tales From series, and the one-shot novels. I also picked up a few of the WEG sourcebooks, even though I never really got into gaming. I fell in love with Dark Empire's style, and TotJ's storyline (the original, and still the best, KotOR!).
My love of Star Wars gaming and Dark Side lore dovetailed into an online community called the Emperor's Hammer. I think they're still around. I made a TIE Fighter mission or two, wrote some Mary Sue fiction, and made some pretty good (but long gone, and much missed) online friends. I even rebelled with them when my Dark Jedi House decided to run off and establish our own Imperium. We had weekly IRC meetings with awards, trivia, and Star Wars chat. I bragged that one day I'd use two VCRs to edit Han shooting first back into the movie; no one believed that a person without professional editing experience could do that. (The laserdiscs were still quite expensive back then, and I never thought of using them.) I also collected the fantastic Star Wars CCG by Decipher; I only knew one person to play it with, but the cards were cool enough on their own. Good times.
The good times pretty much ended by 1999. The Imperium was winding down, WEG lost their license, Decipher would soon lose their license after numerous disappointing mini-sets and a failure to launch the Shadows of the Empire set, and the atroci^H^H^H^H^H^H Phantom Menace was something of a disappointment. In fact, after seeing TPM, I put my Star Wars tapes away and didn't watch them for three years. After AotC, I "kind of" forgave Lucas, and rewatched the Trilogy to see whether I was being fair to the prequels. After all, weren't the old movies just as full of bad dialogue, cheesy humor, awful acting, and inane plotting?
No, of course they weren't. I'd had three years to divest myself of nostalgia, sever the fanboy connection, and frankly, I was negatively disposed towards Star Wars at that time. But the OT endures. And that's why sites like this one will.