As some one who started with C++, and probably started learning programming for the sole reason of it being "interesting"....
I would personally suggest you either start with something very easy or something very low level.
Ruby and Python are great choices, Pythons tutorial/documentation I think makes it a better first language then Ruby. Although if you're not a programmer, you might probably find the official tutorial a bit boring or confusing (terminology wise). The dive into python book that ocicat posted is a great place to start if you go the Python route.
Ruby, you would probably do best to buy a book if you want to go past the original tutorial, imho. Any thing you find though will definitely be OOP oriented.
If you do choose to learn C as a first language, you might like the
C Book, it is no longer current but is 'new enough', found section 8.2 off a Google one day, and noticed it was a decent book. You can also find many (more current) books on C including the
the big kahuna (according to some). This
crzy tutorial and the c-faq if you are pressed from time.
Personally, if I could send a note to myself through time, I would write: "learn /bin/sh first"