Writing Prompt Wednesday: The Curmudgeon List

These were the words to be used in our stories or poems:

tower, rotten, bribe, diamond
—————————————————————– Here’s my story:

~Curmudgeon – (noun) a bad-tempered person, especially an old one.~
This was the “Word of the Day” printed on his homeroom chalkboard.
“What an awesome word!”, Tony thought.
He rolled it around on his tongue. “Cur… mudge … eon.”
By the time the first bell rang, he had a list of real life curmudgeons forming.
-The rotten vice principal who considered all kids as criminals and spontaneously inspected backpacks. How was he to know a cat skull wasn’t a school- approved item?
-That lady who reported his Mom for letting him walk alone to school. Geez! He was almost thirteen!
-The curator at the museum who pulled his ear for shouting in the clocktower exhibit. It was completely worth it, though. He’d found an echo chamber extraordinaire and those places are rare!
And, the old man who lived down the street. His mailbox said, “Strange”. PERFECT.
The man actually had tried to bribe him with Oreos to come inside to see his rock collection. He claimed to have diamonds, too! Creepy stuff!
Tony was walking to class looking at his feet while revisiting that invitation. “Yeah, right.”, he mumbled.

By day’s end, Tony came to realize that Mr. Strange didn’t actually belong on his newly created “curmudgeon list”. He’d added a few new candidates throughout the day. One was his father’s boss who made him cancel their summer trip to the beach because the boss had decided to go to an Indian Sweat Lodge “seeking Truth”.  Dad was stuck with covering the office and Tony was stuck with the community pool.
But, his odd neighbor wasn’t at all bad-tempered even though he must have been pushing one hundred! Strange had even waved to Tony yesterday with a generous smile and shouted, ” You’re welcome any time, young fella. You don’t have to come in.”
Thoughts began to flood his mind.
Perhaps, Tony would ask his mom about that neighbor?
Mr. Strange might actually have an interesting collection?
I wonder if he’s lonely?
One more thing also occurred to Tony. His snap unkind judgement of an otherwise nice old man made Tony a true curmudgeon.
So?
He added himself to the list.

Writing Prompt Wednesday