When I was 3 years old my parents gave me a book by H.E. Rey called 'Find the Constellations'. That's all it took to get me facinated by the stars. I also eventually got a chemistry set and became interested in electronics in 7th grade. But by high school, I definitely knew that science was 'it' for me. The first time I looked at the stars when I was very young, I didn't have any real sense that there was anything especially mysterious or awe-inspiring about what I was looking at. I already knew that the stars were just like the sun but only further away, so they were no big deal. I think that the sense of mystery that people may have for the sky is due to the fact that non-technical people have no idea how the things around them really work. Everything is a mystery to them, the TV, the radio, the VCR and even the car. This is a serious problem in our society because how are these same people supposed to make intelligent decisions about issues like Star Wars or genetic engineering when they haven't the foggiest idea how they work. The decisions they make are not based on hard facts but on who can best sway their opinion emotionally.
My biggest surprise after graduate school was realizing how atypical my graduate school experience had been. I had been very fortunate to have entered a field just as it was emerging. Now I know that most of the time astronomical research isn't quite that exciting. You spend a lot of time filling in the details, studying obscure facets of distant astronomical objects, never getting the sense that your work is especially earth shattering. I still have trouble knowing when to fill in the details up close, and when to step back and look at the whole picture. If you step back too soon, you might make the mistake of jumping to conclusions or making some general statement that just isn't true. If you wait too long before stepping back, someone else might beat you to it.