Hi and welcome!

I don't think your questions are quite relevant...

If by some freaky situation, I lost all my knowledge of web design then I would want to re-learn as quick as possible and take the faster route through all your questions - class, swatting, etc.

I think better questions are "how did you learn, what did you do".

I got into web design by playing with HTML in school and it went from there to my personal life and grew. I learn everything I can by playing. It's as simple as that. Books are good for reference and examples as well as sporting differences between similiar activities, but other than that I try to do as much as possible myself - That's the best way to learn as you understand HOW things work not just that they do.

I've been learning since I was 12. I'm now 19 and I'm still learning. Granted, I'm not learning HTML, or much in Flash, but I'm still learning in Photoshop, which I've been using for about 4 years. I'm still learning almost every programming language I know as I don't think you can ever know a language 100%, just because of all the different ways there are to do something.

As for what languages I would learn first... Those that appeal most. Simple as that. Either they appeal more because you know that someone could use that skill and you could make money, or you want to learn because you can make use of it yourself, etc. At the moment I think most people would want to learn (for web) PHP, ASP and ASP.NET because that is where the money is to be made, on the whole.

I think you would definetly have more luck asking us (as most of us already know something about web design) how we learnt, etc, as opposed to what we would do, when we have already done that and the situation is now different.