I vaguely remember that shit too, my parents used to talk to a lot of people through local BBS networks on our 2400 baud modem. I think it was around 1987-1988 before we signed onto Prodigy, and experienced what the beginning fuss of what the internet was supposed to be like. Prodigy sucked too, all they ever showed was news, and weather info if I remember correctly, and this was in like 1990-1991 I was in 5th grade at the time.
I don't even know, did they consider that "Prodigy" thing as internet or what? I just remembered how slow and shitty it was running on Windows 3.1.1