We all remember our first times—at JCK Las Vegas. Like the 10 retailers who gamely offered up their earliest Vegas memories to senior editor Emili Vesilind for our cover story on how to make the most of this year’s gathering (“Show & Tell 2012”), I thought I’d share a little story about my inaugural show experience.It was 2000. I was 26 years old, living in New York City, and barely a month into my first job out of grad school. I’d been hired by GemKey.com, a long-since-defunct ­business-to-business website, to write about the pearl and watch markets, despite having no prior knowledge of the gem and jewelry industry, not even as a consumer. (Embarrassing but true: I had no idea what a cultured pearl was and could name only three watch brands off the top of my head—Rolex, Movado, and Kenneth Cole.)In any event, I checked into my room at Treasure Island and tried not to