I got hooked a few times.
I was hooked in middle school first. My dad bought me one of the early Yomega Brains from his hometown of Fall River, MA. A kid at school liked it and I couldn’t do anything with it, so I traded him for a Duncan Midnight Special (just a black Imperial lol) which I loved because I could make it come back. I learned Rock the Baby on it but broke it. Every time I saw one in toy stores after that though I’d buy one and have it in my pocket for a few weeks.
In college, the late-90’s boom hit, and every kid at the summer camp where I was a counselor had a Yomega Fireball. I bought one and learned the stuff they were doing so they would listen to me. The last day of camp, two of my kids gave me a THP Raider as a parting gift. I learned my first “decent” tricks (i.e. Split the Atom), took it back to school, and made up some fun stuff, but I forgot about it again.
After college, maybe in 2001-2(?) when I was teaching, one of my kids brought in an old Yomega X-Brain. I borrowed it and did some stuff I remembered and the kids were blown away (even though by any measure, this was NOT good yo-yoing at all). Feeling inspired I went out and bought a new yo-yo, a blue SuperYo Renegade. I found Ken’s World On A String, and learned some more stuff. I was into it, but after a month it collected dust in my teacher desk.
UNTIL, a couple years later when a different 5th grader, Ace, came in with a yo-yo and he knew some stuff. I had a yo-yo in my desk ( I think a Custom Mag?) with no string, and we traded the string back and forth showing each other stuff. For whatever reason, like in The Lion King, IT WAS TIME… I found a FH2 marked down at Target, found yoyoing.com/news, bought my first 100 pack of string, and I literally have not gone a day without playing yo-yo since May 22, 2005.
Safe to say the last one hooked me.