There’s a room in the museum that no one likes to talk about. No one likes to see the room. It’s an old worn-down room. The people who visit the museum stick to the flashier things. But the kids don’t have the same conforming outlook. They haven’t been swayed one way or another into thinking it’s not as good. They believe that room is just as good as the other ones. But the history in that room is perhaps more important than the other rooms. The room tells the stories of the other people. The people whose stories were erased from history because it didn’t match the narrative. It didn’t fit the bill. The story was too graphic. The reality of it hurt too much. But the kids couldn’t read it, or if they could, they didn’t understand it, so they played in the room instead. And later, the kids who used to love to play in that old, abandoned room grow up and are influenced by their education, and friends, and family, and they forget about the fact there were stories in that little room at all. They reach an age where they are told that that room is not
important. And they believe it. They don’t question what they are told because they don’t even
consider that there’s something to question about it.

But as he grows up, one little boy strays from the rest. He remembers when he was little
and how much he loved that room. He returns to the museum to find the room. By now, a new
set of kids have come and gone. Strange, he thinks, that there was no one like him when he was
young. No teens or adults reminded of the little room they used to make their own. The room that
used to be anything they wanted.

But the truth is harsher. When he arrives at the room, he finally sees what was behind the
dust and the veil of childlike innocence he’d had when he had been there last. It makes him
question things. Because these stories weren’t what he was taught. It wasn’t his teachers’
traditional history that they had taught him. It wasn’t the boring classroom textbook he had been
forced to read for years. These were real stories, and they didn’t match up with his own ideas.
But he read them: Every. Single. Story. He learned their names, and their faces, and their
history. He learned the erased parts of the history book that hadn’t fit right when they were
written. The parts that didn’t belong with the rest. He was scared at first. Because how many
times do you find a piece of history no one else acknowledges? But the more he read, the more
he realized. It couldn’t have been a new feeling. No one acknowledges a lot of things. His point
of view shifted.

He brought a friend. They learned and read the history of the people who weren’t good
enough for the history books. But the more people who learned about the history in the room, the
more people that wanted it gone.

It was too graphic.

It was too unfiltered.;

They hadn’t considered those side of the stories before so why should they matter now?

Wait. Wasn’t that the room they had let their kids play in? What kind of parents were
they?

The dust kicked up.

But they weren’t upset about the history anymore. They were mad at themselves. So, they
took the opportunity to speak out.

“I think we should get rid of it!”

And suddenly, it was the room’s fault for every mistake they had made. They started
pinning the blame for everything on the little room.

If the room hadn’t been there, their children wouldn’t have grown up into spoiled teens.

If the room hadn’t been there, that girl wouldn’t have been left out of her friend’s group.

If the room hadn’t been there, that kid would’ve made it on the baseball team.

If the room hadn’t been there, they wouldn’t have the same problems.

The dust settled.

The people were too focused on their own problems to even bother thinking about other
peoples flaws, but thinking that everyone else would see them and judge, they blamed the room.
The people who saw themselves in the room’s stories chose to stay silent. They were too afraid
to speak up about their experiences because if the people reacted like this to the little room with
their stories on paper, how would they react to the real-life accounts of it? The people who
hadn’t even known about the room chose to blame it for their problems. Because who wants to
own up to their mistakes? Certainly not someone who has an option to transfer the blame.

So, the little room of history was blamed, and only the teens who had read its stories
were upset. But when they tried to speak up about the room, their authority dismissed it.

What do you know about the world? History is better when it’s not told like this.

But it isn’t. And the teens tried to tell people, but the ones who had power wouldn’t
listen. The people who knew the truth were ignored. They remembered the stories. They were the
people who remembered the truth. They started writing them down. The stories of the people
who never got a page in our history books. And the stories of the harsh realities of our society.
And their own stories too.

And it was a good thing they did because once some people blamed the little room of the
museum for their problems, others did too. The little room may have been in one little town, but
every place has its own little room. And when the first little room became a scapegoat, the others
followed. And soon the whole world had a little room to blame for their problems. And they
decided that the only way to destroy their problems was to destroy all of the little rooms.

The people who knew the rooms tried to speak up, but now the rest of the world drowned
them out. The people chose to close the little rooms. Because they couldn’t risk the idea of the
people learning what they had let their kids around. But the kids being there was never the
problem.

People “judging” the parents was the problem.

The world being a place where the “bad stories” are available was the problem.

The kids learning the other side of history was the problem.

The truth and the gore and the pain and the suffering. All of its records gone with one group of people who decided it was the root of their problems. The room was closed. The sign on the broken door was smashed. The stories were thought to be gone.

But the boy who found it remembered. And he had written it down. And the people he
told remembered too. They had written it as well. And the world had their little boys and girls
who remembered. They all made sure it wasn’t forgotten. The little stories of the world that
aren’t good enough to make it into the books.

The people choose the stories. And the people talk. They tell stories and eventually, more people realize they didn’t know what was really in that room they had closed down. They just
followed everyone else.

So, they rebuild the little room, and they add their history to it. They try to keep history
from repeating. But it always does. The truth that people swore to protect after “the first time” is
burned in an “accidental” fire. And this time, no one had bothered to protect it. They figured it
was safe to forget now and let it sit there. It wasn’t.

The teen boy aged. He’s an old man now. His papers from when he was young are sat in
his desk. The original copies are intact. He never trusted the people to have the only pieces of
history that told the hard stories. He knew his history was written to repeat itself. The pages of
his books are filled with the untold names and people of history.

But the others are burned. The copies of his writings are ashes. The public doesn’t want
to recognize them anymore.

Maybe those stories were the problem all along, they whisper.

But he knows they weren’t. And he’s told them the stories enough times to know they’ll
forget again.

He’s made his own little room by now. He knows there will be another little boy or girl
like him who finds the truth. And he knows his story will be forgotten one day too. But his life
was not one of regret and pain.

He retold the stories of the forgotten. He told the erased history. He changed minds, if
only for a time. But he had made an effort. He sat in his old rocking chair. His grandfather’s
rocking chair. The rocking chair of a man who had his own problems and hidden history. His
own scars and stories and bruises until the end.

The old man’s children could tell his story. And his grandchildren could tell the stories of
the silenced. But his story was done.

He had reached the final chapter, the final page, the final sentence. And he was more than
at peace to leave the place he had tried to fix for far too many years. And he took his last breath
in that little old rocking chair in his little old study.

When his grandkids found his little old room, they saw a place where they were free to do
whatever they wanted. And when they grew up, they found the meaning in his old books.
And the cycle started over. Because it always does. Because we choose whose history is
important. And sometimes we choose the future that we don’t want. We make mistakes. Life
isn’t perfect. We just don’t acknowledge our flaws anymore. We choose to move on and try to
forget.

But it’s not always the glorified, perfectly written history that changes lives. It’s the one
that shows us flaws. The one that shows us the truth. The one that doesn’t gloss over the
hardships. The one that doesn’t hide imperfections. The one we don’t often see. The forgotten
history is the one that we need the most