By Elissa Caterfino Mandel

I had a plan, and it didn’t involve eggs. Early this morning, I set out to buy books at Shakespeare and Company; I figured I’d have a cappuccino and a scone at their cafe and read for an hour before I took barre class.  It sounded decadent, a little like Paris.   Sugar and dairy were the prices I was willing to pay for a few good books. The web said Shakespeare and Company was open at 8, so I off I went.

Next time, check the real-live sign, stupid.  8 am openings are for weekdays only, as I found when I pulled the door open at 5 after 8 and was promptly shooed out.  “Not yet, not yet.  9 am on Saturdays,” said the enforcer who blocked me in the alcove. Then she promptly locked the door.

What if I were willing to buy $150 worth of books?  Would they open 20 minutes early for that?  Maybe they’d open now if I upped it to $300.  I did not offer either of those things. I’d been unceremoniously dismissed to the sidewalk.

That’s how I ended up at a solo table at the West Side Diner a few doors down with just my cellphone for company. Now I had an hour and a half before class.   Luckily, this diner has a veritable wall of windows.  Eating alone isn’t bad because I can pretend I’m there to offer trenchant commentary about what’s going on in the neighborhood. Unfortunately not much — at this time on a Saturday morning in NYC, the only things dumb enough to be awake are dogs, little children, the people who take care of them — and me.

At least the neighborhood obliged quickly with a distraction.  Right after I ordered my spinach and eggs, a woman outside the diner window tied a young dog to a fire hydrant.   She motioned for the dog to sit.  Then she walked away.  Was she abandoning the dog?  Should I do something? Leave my eggs and go outside for a doggie intervention and rescue?

As soon as the woman had gone, the dog stood up, strained at its leash and barked incessantly.  “Save me, save me,” it seemed to say.  Well, that’s exactly what I would have done if I were tied to a fire hydrant.

Maybe this would play out like the opening of an episode of Law and Order. The dog might have been barking for totally non-selfish reasons — to alert everyone in the immediate vicinity that there was a dead body ten feet away.

This is what your mind does when you’re having breakfast alone, you’re bored, and it’s eight ten on Saturday morning. Make stuff up.

In under five minutes, the woman returned with her cup of to-go coffee and untied the dog from the hydrant. Drama ended.

But not entirely. Respite from tedium arrived in the form of a tiny little boy and a dad who sat down in the booth across from me.  Soon, they were engaged in a heady game of “I Spy”.  “I spy something black,” the dad said.  With his face peeled to the window, the little boy gestured at a passing car.  “Nope, that’s blue,” the dad said.  OK, really?  The dad was obviously cheating or color blind.  The car the boy found was clearly black; it should have counted, and I was about to say so.

Instead I told the dad that I thought his son was adorable. When I tell someone his kid is adorable, it’s often good for a three-minute conversation. Typically I explain that I’m the grandma of a 3-year-old and wait for the person to say I look much too young to be a grandma.  Things didn’t go that way.  “We’re busy playing I Spy,” was all the man said.

Ok.  Conversation ender.  Maybe the guy thought I was flirting, but that was ridiculous.  He was young enough to be my son.  Perhaps he was afraid I planned to snatch his son. He might have even been a kidnapper himself, concerned that if he and I talked too long, I’d grow suspicious and… Nope. The blue in his eyes was a pretty direct match to his son’s.

End of story: he was just a run-of-the-mill dad doing his sleeping spouse a favor on a Saturday morning.

Ok. Back to the grind for me, which meant my head’s inevitable return to my phone. Even though all I was doing was texting friends and scrolling through Facebook, let this stupid guy with a cute kid think I was closing a 10 million dollar deal. Talk about overcompensation.

When I paid my check and headed over to the bookstore, I realized I didn’t have to buy any fiction. I’d created enough of my own.