Prodigy

Once upon a time, high speed internet did not exist. [gasp!] I know. But don’t worry, this isn’t the beginning of a horror story. Let me continue. Instead of high speed internet, we used dial up. We were allotted to a specific number of minutes per month. We kept a little log book next to the computer with “Prodigy” written in black Sharpie. Any time we used the internet, we had to open the log book and write the date, time, and number of minutes used.

I’m not doing a very good job convincing you that we’re not in a horror story, am I? [sigh] Well, let me assure you, the worst is over.

The internet had a password. Before you could hear those glorious screeching noises that the dial-up connection made, you first had to enter some magical pass phrase that I did not know. I was too little. I was not trusted with such grandeur. Damian was, though. (Wha—?! Damian was trusted with something and I was not? I don’t care that he’s 5 years older; I was much more trustworthy than he was!) So Damian would ask permission to get on Prodigy (we didn’t get on the Internet. Oh, no. We got on Prodigy), my parents would say yes, and the two of us would scramble up to the office attached to my parents’ bedroom. Damian would type in the coveted password. We’d wait for that telling screech that announced we were in, and then we’d go to the game section.

In the game section we would play all sorts of games, but specifically I remember the 3D maze. This wasn’t a maze like in a coloring book where you solved the maze from above. Nope. This was 3D! You were in the maze. All you could see was what was right in front of you. I remember watching Damian turn right, left, left, right and being utterly confused. I was lost after 2, maybe 3 turns. But I loved watching him anyway. Here and there he’d let me play and I’d get hopelessly lost. But that’s ok, because I was playing on Prodigy! And then our allotted time would end and we would log our time in the book and go back to more mundane things like reading and watching TV.