Story

The only time I would recommend starting with JavaScript is if that's all you ever want to do - write (crappy) JS code for web pages.

If you want to learn to program, then I'd recommend starting with something simple and then adding to it. I started my college education with Pascal, and I can't think of a reason that was a bad choice then, or would be now. But very soon thereafter I did some of:
* C
* ADA
* Prolog
* lisp
* Assembly (68000)

These days I would probably recommend starting with something like pascal - simple, no (c style) pointers, no OO. And then
* C (understand the machine)
* Maybe some assembly - but maybe not
* Something OO (Java, python, ruby)
* Something crazy (Prolog)
* Something DI (maybe javascript)

You could do a lot worse than http://pragprog.com/book/btlang/seven-languages-in-seven-weeks once you have the fundamentals.