Fine line between truth and rumor

(Excerpt from an in-progress novel: Growing Up Mostly Happy

There is a fine line between truth and rumor, and sometimes it’s so fine as to be invisible.

There is no truth to the rumor that the World History education of a couple of bunches of eighth grade students at Avery was sorely lacking in the area of an historical landmark, i.e., the Spanish Inquisition.

So what if in 1959 some unnamed nefarious no-do-gooder slipped into the school at night, wedged open the lock on the school supplies closet in the seventh grade classroom with a piece of flatware, took all forty of the World History books and exorcised the Spanish Inquisition chapter from the all with a razor blade?

So what if those students who later went to college and took history and were queried about the Inquisition trials and man’s inhumanity to man in the name of religion and responded in the only way they could: Say, huh?

So what if no one noticed – not even the eighth grade history teacher – that the Inquisition was not even included as a single line of type or as an historical footnote?

No one missed it when historical knowledge was being thrown around, how important could be it?