A Bad Day - Part Three

It was late afternoon on Wednesday and Joey was determined to get out of the house this weekend and meet some new people.  Being new in town, it would be hard and he wasn't sure where to go.  He was staring out of his third floor office building, looking down the street to see if there were any attractions - some place where he might be able to meet up with a really nice girl.

Just then his boss, Mr. Ripley, knocked lightly on the door jam of his office.  Joey turned around to face the door.

"I thought you might like to look over these reports," Mr. Ripley said as he held out a large stack of papers for Joey's endorsement.  Joey took a few steps across the tan carpet that lay between him and Mr. Ripley.  He  took the papers.  While flipping through the pages he heard Mr. Ripley say, "Do you have any plans this evening, Joey?"

Wondering where this was going, Joey looked up from his papers, past Mr. Ripley's brown-rimmed eyeglasses and directly into his green eyes.  "Um, no, not really.  I was just going to try a new deli for my supper this evening, that's all," Joey replied.

"Well, how would you like to come have dinner with my wife and I this evening?" Mr. Ripley bid with hope in his voice.  "I know you're new to this town and probably don't know many people.  She's a great cook and I know she'd love to have you.  She's making strawberry shortcake for dessert tonight.  After dinner, I thought maybe you'd like to go with us to our Wednesday evening church service.  It's a rather small and quick meeting.  You'd out of there by eight o'clock."

Joey's head was whirling.  He'd love to have a good home-cooked meal.  And homemade strawberry shortcake was too hard to resist.  But, church?  And in the middle of the week?  But that big slice of strawberry shortcake kept coming to his mind.  Large, red berries under an avalanche of fluffly, sweet whipped cream.

"All right.  I'd love to come," Joey smiled with thoughts of shortcake dancing in his mind.

"Great," said Mr. Ripley with anticpation in his voice.  "It might be a way for you to meet some good folks this evening.  One of my best friends will be there this evening.  So, we'll see you at about six o'clock then?"

"I'll be there," Joey said, wondering what a church service would be like in the middle of the week.

Mr. Ripley turned to loudly saunter back to his office.

Joey was excited to meet Mrs. Ripley and her strawberry shortcake.  But, he wasn't sure about the church thing.  He had been to church when he was a young boy.  It was okay, but rather boring and he was always glad when it was over.  He never seemed to understand anything the preacher said when he did go.  But, maybe church in the middle of the week would be a little different than the ones he remembered.  He'd never been to a meeting in the middle of the week.  And meeting some more people would be good.  That's exactly what he'd been wanting to do this week anyway.  So, he checked that off of his To Do list and sat back down at his desk.

He looked down at his large stack of papers and quietly said, "Strawberry shortcake."