For me it was between school and university (i.e. 18) when I fell for a 9 yo. Before that I could pretend to myself that I was merely vanilla gay, given that I attracted to some extent to various boys at my school from the age of 14 up, though always younger than me. But then away from that environment, a 9 yo arrived in my life for a period of about 3 months, before I left there forever. Though a couple of years ago (i.e. decades later) I did drive close to the village where he lived and was amazingly choked up by seeing it in the distance.

I knew that such people as us existed since forever - the fact that one of our teachers was sacked after such an incident might have given me a hint...