When I was little (three, four?) my dad had made for me a "panel" (this is how he called it) with a row of coloured small low-voltage light bulbs and switches to play with. However I really fell in love with lighting about two years later when I discovered the beauty of mercury (MBF) street lighting. The lanterns were mostly open so you could see the lamps and I was watching them start every evening.

I had also mentioned them in an essay at school when I was about ten but my teacher didn't understand what I was writing about.
A couple of years later I "discovered" fluorescents since almost everything at home (or even at school) was incandescent and fluros were a refreshing change.
The strength of my lighting passion has been varying gently through the years but mercury lighting remains still atop.

For me it al started when i was two years old  playing with light bulbs and a table lamp, untill everything unfolded at age of 4 got me started in basic of electricty
And around summer if 1986 i got fastinated with discharge lighting MV and sox mainly.

Just a mish-mash of some of my earliest lighting memories:

I was interested in a variety of lighting stuff from the very start. One of my earliest memories of the interest was seeing various street lights (mostly NEMA heads) around where we lived when I went on the occasional evening car ride with Dad. It was about half MV and half HPS at the time, and I loved how there were different colors of street lights. For many years I would occasionally have dreams at night of having my own NEMA head in my room, complete with clear MV lamp. You never would have convinced me that it would actually happen 10 years later (although, sans NEMA head and with DX lamps, but close enough  ).

Dad's house on its own had a palette of interesting lighting stuff. The bathroom was lit with a PL-13 fixture, and the secondary stairwell was lit with a PL-13 adapter which I now own. Although neither of these particularly interested me at the time. The kitchen was lit with a 2x40 RS wraparound. Slow RS startups always interested me, so I would sometimes turn that fixture on and off to watch it start. There was also a 175 watt MV NEMA head mounted right on the outside of the house. However, it was missing the refractor and the lamp was EOL, so it never really interested me. What did interest me, though, was that it had an A-shaped DX lamp, which I of course assumed to be a regular incandescent light bulb. So for a long time I thought "street light bulbs" and incandescent bulbs were interchangeable.  

Many family members today tell me that as I toddler I loved unscrewing light bulbs and switching them out with other ones in other fixtures, and I liked noting the wattage of each one I looked at. That's totally true. Especially at my grandparents' house, which has 6 or 7 light bulbs' worth of fixtures in each room, and many three way fixtures and bulbs. I thought three-way bulbs were totally cool.

Oddly enough, another thing I liked to do as a toddler was unscrew the bulb from my nightlight, drop it on the floor from the top of the staircase, and see if it would break. I have very clear memories of doing that, and I don't remember being scolded by Mom, who would have to clean up the broken bulbs. I must have broke half a dozen of them before I grew out of it.

The kitchen in the home of my other grandparents was lit not only by a glass drum fixture (the pioneer of my love for such fixtures today), but it was on a dimmer too, and I totally loved that. Also, they had a manual preheat F15T12 desk lamp, which was my first exposure to fixtures like that. My grandfather always liked to say that the best thing my parents could get me for Christmas would be some arbitrary panel of lights and switches. I think now that he picked up on my genuine lighting interest before anyone else who knew me.

Another early memory was when I started school. The gymnasium was lit with many MH fixtures, the bulbs of which were all different color temperatures, and I loved that. At the time I thought the bluish ones must have been the same as the MV street lights I saw, and the orangish ones the same as the HPS street lights. Also, my kindergarten teacher had a 2x40 RS shop light fitted with plant lamps, hung on a shelf where she grew plants. I always liked when she would let me turn it on.

I have always liked discharge type lights-MV,HPS,MH or even high pressure Xenon.Got the liking for the Xenon from a former projectionist freind of mine.Now I like some sorts of LEDS.I bought a lo priced mercury yard light from a building supply store-175W -and it went from there.Have MH up to 1000W have a GE 1000W MH floodlight that came from a football stadium when the revampted their lights.Would have loved to have had one of the 2.2Kw MH lights they put in the place of the 1K one.But no way to run the 2.2K one-its ballast has a primary voltage of 277/480V.The one I got had to restrap the ballast primary to run from 120V.Draws about 10A when fully lit.Don't run it much.I turned it on for a freind that came to vist-He says"WOW you just brought in the sun!"When I first got that light lived on the top floor of an apartment house high rise.Would shine it thru my balcony window and make GIANT shadow pictures on the apartment lawn!!Have a large collection of HPS lights,too,250 and 400W and a large collection of portable HID handheld battery powered lights-just simply HID carheadlights packaged in a portable form powered by a rechargeable battery.My favorite is my Polarion "ABYSS" Dual.This can run at two wattages-30W and 45W.3000 Lumen lo and like almost 5000 lumen high.It is a dive light.Was interesting about this light it runs just fine out of water.Usually dive lights need to be immersed in water for cooling.It is like 3900K in color.There is a second version of the Abyss that is 6K in color-and more of a floodlight for underwater photography.

Thanks for all your replies!

@trencheel303: I can't hoard things like some people can, so you likely won't see me with a shed full of stuff any time soon, but I enjoy and use my modest collection in practical ways...
That's also my approach.

@TheMaritimeMan: ...and many three way fixtures and bulbs. I thought three-way bulbs were totally cool.
That's so cool, Trent! Did you mean these three-way lamps? I've never seen anything like this here. Just multi-lamp fixtures plus dual/split switches or dimmers.

Now I also recall a clear 100 W light bulb that was totally blackened but still brighter than other 100 W bulbs. It was at my grand uncle's/aunt's. I needed to test their light bulb reserves periodically.

For me it was seeing low pressure sodium streetlights I loved the red color gradually turning yellow. Also in my grandmothers house she had bulbs without shades so I could clearly see the bulbs. I find even now clear bulbs aremyy faverout for general lighting.  I love lighting also because I'm scared of the dark

Did you mean these three-way lamps?

Yep.

When I was little, say around 9 or 10 years old, I would tag along with my father to the old Deseret Gymnasium in Salt Lake City, Utah that he worked out at.  One day, he introduced me to his friend, who happened to work maintenance there, and he invited me to tag along with him as he changed out burned out lights all over the gym.  Well I was hooked.  I would help him by handing him generally a new or slightly used Sylvania F40T12 cool white tube, and taking the burned out one and placing it in the "bad" box.  He would change out ballasts, sockets, and then we would go climb up into the attic above the 2 olympic sized swimming pools and change out burned out F40T12 HO tubes that shined down into the pool area.  And then from time to time we would get a lift and he would go up and change out the burned out fixtures in any 1 of 40 racquetball, handball, and Squash courts... Well I was hooked for sure.  I would go scout out burned out fixtures ahead of time and then we would go repair/replace em.  Ted Peterson was his name.  And he was a very kind and friendly gentlemen who took the opportunity to teach me many great things about lighting and wiring and also to encourage me to learn more on my own and to do my best.  I will always be grateful to him for that.  He eventually left his job there when he got an offer to help as an assistant coach for a college football program and a short time later, my family moved back to Coloardo.  A number of years later, they tore down my beloved Deseret Gymnasium to make room for a new religious conference center.  I was very very upset when I heard of this as it felt like a great part of me had been torn down as well.  To this day, I still occasionally have dreams of being back there and working on the lights with Ted. 

Hey Ryan that's a nice story that guy started a life long interest for you

When I was 4 or 5 years old (data corrupted), I was scared of dark since what now I can describe as seeing a ghost, but back then I was terrified of it. Until one day my parents decided to leave the curtains open and let incandescent light from the street light to shine in. That start my fascination with street lights. I started to notice different shades of light outputted by mercury vapor lights in their various age, first time to see HPS was magic to me - tubular clear bulb giving weird orange light. I was running away from home a lot, I can't say it was good times for me back then, so I spent quite long time outside on the streets at night, looking at the lights, noticing different shapes of fixtures and started to draw street lights a lot by the age between 7 to 9 (data corrupted) to the point where I was sent to some kind of psychological institute, because my parents got worried about me drawing electrical poles.
When I was 12 I got my first LED. It was a broken TV and I stripped out dim red LED's out of it to turn on with batteries. I started to experiment with LED and by the age of 16 I managed to switch the LED with a transistor. That hooked me to electronics.
Now I'm 27 and still fascinated about streetlights, I have at least 3 LED's glow in my bedroom at night on old 9v batteries plus the rgb candle entrails with color fade effect on usb charger as I'm still not comfortable to be in complete darkness.

I really don't know, for as long as I can remember ... I've always loved both Christmas lights, and Fluorescents.

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my family moved back to Coloardo.

Just curious.. where in CO ?

Well I have always been interested in Ceiling Fans, and I would always play with lights. But what got me hooked was when it was a long drive from home and my mom said " look at the pretty lights sweetie" and seeing the orange HPS highway lights sold me into a wonderful world. Now I give people tips, collect lighting, and love what I do.

  I have always loved how there were different colors of light. My bathrooms and kitchen have always been RS Fluorescent so I always knew of those. HPS was dominant in Dallas by then, so MV was mostly seen in parking lots. My school was instant start in kindergarten, so I never witnessed a full change out. The gym, however, was MH or MV. I would always shut them off after class and watch them slowly cool down, and then turn them on to be fascinated by the warm up time. Then, in first grade, we got "upgraded" to T5 or T8 HO PS motion sensored fluoros. The lights are 1974 wraparounds that say "rapid start lamps only" on the ballast covers.

I got into lighting when I built a incandescent ballasted f15t12 setup. My love for lighting has increased since then.