That's because you approached it wrong
I'm serious.
Perl was designed as a "better shell, with a few things integrated in" and all of the "BTW its now a real programming language" stuff was later shoehorned on top. So if you use it as a "better shell, with a few things integrated in", it tends to work out well and it doesn't take you long to train your intuition about what Perl's "grammar" looks like. And once your intuition is trained by that, the real programming stuff fits in surprisingly well.
But if you approach it as a real programming language right off of the bat, you're going to keep tripping over the features that were prominently placed because that's what it has been optimized for.
Cheers,
Ben
I have come to believe that idealism without discipline is a quick road to disaster, while discipline without idealism is pointless. -- Aaron Ward (my brother)