Thanks Tenkar,
I started with Traveller and RuneQuest (Chaosium v2) somewhere around 1981. My first exposure to AD&D was when I volunteered to sit in for an absent player in a game featuring the 'Against The Giants' series of modules.
That first game of AD&D was so boring and so combat-heavy I only survived by chewing off one off my eyelids (it grew back).
Although this wasn't indicative of all my early experiences, at the time I thought all D&D was like that and couldn't figure out why more people in my area weren't playing RuneQuest.
I have never played D&D 4E but having read the PHB, I know I will never run the game (I'll play anyones game but prefer to run a more traditional style of game). I only became aware of the OSR when I stumbled upon Basic Fantasy which I still love (the character sheet I created for that game is still available from the designer's site).
I use old-school style systems because it allows me to do more story-telling and role-playing than number crunching. I guess the purpose of my post was to find out where other players were coming from.
I'm pretty sure Weird FRP will be my system of choice just as soon as I finish my current Classic Traveller campaign!
It's not the years, it's the mileage.