There is a difference in aptitude, but part of the problem is that pointers are almost never explained correctly. Many texts try to explain in abstract terms, which doesn't work; a few try to explain graphically, which doesn't work terribly well. I've met professional C programmers who therefore never understood pointers, but who did understand them after I gave them the right explanation.

The right explanation is in terms of numbers: the key is that char *x actually means the same thing as int x (on a 32-bit machine, and modulo some superficial convenience). A pointer is just an integer that gets used to store a memory address. Then you write out a series of numbered boxes starting at e.g. 1000, to represent memory locations. People get pointers when you put it like that.