[Jeremysr]

I don't know if this works for everyone, (and I hate to appeal to magic), but I'm pretty sure it was http://mislav.uniqpath.com/poignant-guide/book/chapter-3.htm... that gave me a visceral understanding of Ruby's syntax. For example, the slashes surrounding the Regexp are like pins that you stick the Regexp onto the paper with, and it lights up if the pattern matches. The at signs stand for "ATtribute". Exclamation/question marks have meanings analogous to their natural language counterparts. And the vertical bars form a little chute that the block variables slide down into the block through. It's really fun.