If you had started with something more sane, like Forth or I guess even flawed Pascal, you would have understood pointers much earlier. C is such a horrible language to learn first, second or even third.
In C# code I constantly see the "anti-pattern" of new-ing up a variable at declaration, only to immediately overwrite it on the next line with the results of some function. I can't help but think that the person writing it has no concept of what "new" is actually doing (with regards to the heap and the GC, for example).
If you want to learn pointers, you have to learn a language that provides them. So C, or like I said, Forth or Pascal. C is fine as a first language, if you don't mind the pain. C++ is a horrible language, no matter when you learn it. Never cripple the minds of beginners with it.
About your C# anecdote, does the language allow something like the following?:
type variables = someFunction ();
does the language allow something like the following?:
var obj = new SomeType();
obj = GetSomeType();
These days C# is actually a decent language to code in, it has a nice functional aspect to it with linq/lambdas, and you can still go down to C style pointers/"unsafe" code if necessary (with lots of restrictions of course). It's really the Microsoft dependency that kills it more than anything else.
var obj = new SomeType();
obj = GetSomeType();
var obj = GetSomeType();
I know that there's a free .net runtime called Mono. What about the compiler side of free C#?