Under 18 but used it for nearly 20 years? Were you born at a negative number?
A lot of ops were people who synced (peered) their stable and moderated servers on good connections with efnet. Like, OC1-3 connections. My friends and I were pretty much apprentice network engineers to a family member who ran a NOC so we had.. servers..
edit: LOL I just looked up oc1-3 speeds. That used to be so fast.
OC1 - 52 Mb OC3 - 156 Mb
And my parents really weren't very helpful with me growing it into a career. I was always "playing on the computer."
HPB (high ping bitch in counterstrike 1.6) :(