Hi Tim, Welcome to the wonderful world of the geek. Geekdom is a noble profession and well respected. Great are geeks loved, especially when the gadget is on the fritz.

Your best bet is to get older items, like old iMacs, towers, and iPods and gain experience by taking them apart and seeing how they go together. Dissecting broken or non-functional things is great fun, and from time to time you can take several bad items and make a good item from them. My greatest pleasure is taking old broken computers, repairing them and getting the parts from other old computers, and then giving them to someone that has no computer at all. Trust me, it's worth doing. You learn a lot and gain valuable insight in how Apple puts things together. As well as helping keep computers from falling into landfills, you also gain friends and help people. No downside, right?

I would also take as many technology classes as you can in school and make sure to go to college. The best computer jobs require a degree. Not even necessarily a degree in computers (but it helps) but a degree showing that you have a general competency in reading/writing/following instruction.

And the number one rule for being a computer geek - Don't know how to do everything. Know how to find out how to do everything. Knowing how to find the answer (like following guides on sites like iFixIt) will make you good at this.

Have fun and never give up.