I had grown up around BB guns, but I was apprehensive the first time I fired a real handgun in my life.
My younger brother was the first between us to own a handgun, it was a Springfield Armory XD in .45 ACP. He purchased it literally a month after they first came out with the XD45. He had shot the XD once before, but this was the first time I had ever fired a handgun, heck it was the first time I had ever been to a public range, and an indoor one at that.
He went first, and the thunder from the .45 wasn't easing the pit in my stomach, and then it was my turn. There I stood, holding a polymer-framed stick of dynamite (there's a Glock joke in there, somewhere), not knowing how it would feel, nervous that I wouldn't be able to hang on to it or that it would fly up and bury the front sight into my forehead. I had only handled a shotgun before this, I literally did not know what to expect when the trigger came back. After a few moments, I summoned my courage, and pulled the trigger, and that XD45 gave me an awesome adrenaline rush and a monkey on my back that has yet to let go.
Just a month after that, I had my own handgun, a Smith and Wesson Model 581 .357 Magnum (being the eldest, I had to have a more powerful handgun than his), with a Crimson Trace Lasergrip. Shortly after, I got my first semi-auto, an FN FNP-40. Those two handguns eventually became 3, then 4, and so on.
The XD, 581, and FNP are long gone now, but they opened the door to gun collecting for me. I now have handguns in most of the major calibers (9, 40, 45, 357, and 44), and the collection will only grow as time and money permit.