I'd personally be pretty happy with < 2K. The main things I use jQuery for are: 1) selecting nodes (especially children of selected nodes), 2) manipulating node attributes, 3) AJAX, 4) extend(), 5) animating CSS, 6) normalizing some events.
The better poll would have been: when did you start programming.
I started really young so programming was never scary to me. It was just like a slower version of drawing or cooking. i.e. you're making something but it takes a long time to do the code "recipe" to get the ultimate result. ... It also didn't help that the only way to save your programs was to play them to audio cassette...