I had a near crisis shopping experience yesterday at the Alderwood Mall.

It’s very infrequently that I shop at the mall. I prefer shopping at secondhand stores (not vintage shops — secondhand stores), boutiques stocked with local designers’ work, and Rummage. But there are a few basics that require a trip to the mall, and jeans necessitate delving into the land of food courts.

For the last four years I’ve gotten all my jeans at a store called Anchor Blue. Once upon a time it was known as Miller’s Outpost, and it’s got your usual collection of boring teenager clothes (button-ups, faux-vintage Ts, bla bla), and then a wall of jeans.

The jeans fit me perfectly. We all know how hard it is to find jeans, and once you find a pair that fits just right, you know to hold tight. My size has changed through the years, but the jeans always fit me like a second skin, and I’ve bought several pairs a year since 2000. The styles vary (boot cut, flared hipster, stretch low rise) and the colors change (deep indigo, “amino washed” blue, black), but Anchor Blue has always been there for me.

I should have known the end was coming, though. Recently, I’ve had increasing troubles finding jeans that didn’t have weird thigh bleaching or “whiskers” across the crotch. Increasingly, the jeans had a strange brown wash to them, or only came in a slightly unappealing over-dyed blue.

But I persevered. This weekend I made my mecca up to the Alderwood Mall to sift through whatever dismal colors they had in the style I liked.

I arrived at Anchor Blue to find a wall of super-low stretchy no-waistband jeans. Jeans with no pockets on the back! Jeans cut so low that my ass crack was hanging out even before I did the requisite kneel-down test. Jeans so stretchy that they might as well have been running pants, but with flares. And no where to be seen were my beloved non-stretchy, non super-low boot cut jeans.

I cornered a 15 year old sales associate.

“Are these all the jeans you have?” I asked her. I realized immediately what a silly question this was: I was standing in front of a wall display 15 feet long and 8 feet high, filled with jeans. I was standing in front of hundreds of pairs of jeans. And I was asking if that was it. She assured me that yes, it was.

“What about the boot cut style?” I begged. “The ones that aren’t stretchy or super-low? The ones that have a waistband?” The associate explained that they weren’t carrying the style any more, but that I might find some on the discount rack. She tried to make me feel better by telling some story about how she totally hated stretchy jeans, too. (I appreciated her sympathy, but she was clearly lying: her jeans were painted on with an airbrush.)

Wandering back to the sales rack, I found one pair of boot cut jeans. They were a size 3, and I am not.

I wandered out of the store, heartbroken. When you’re abandoned by your favorite jeans merchandiser, it’s hard not to take it personally. The mall, not typically a friendly place, became a carnival hall of horrors. Every store featured jeans that were acid washed, super low, over-flared, under-dyed, no pockets, no waistlines, etc.

I tried a couple other teenager stores, and found the same problem. A few styles I found included “hipster stretch super-lows,” “tapered ultra-lows,” and “flared two-button lows.” I tried going to a department store, but I don’t want to pay $100 for a pair of designer jeans. labels mean less than nothing to me. I can’t even get myself to try on a pair of jeans that cost more than $50. I was in consumer hell.

After exhausting several stores in my search, on a whim I wandered into Eddie Bauer. Pastel sweaters hung in the display cases. Matronly khakis were merchandized with “just got back from a weekend in the Hamptons”-style button-up tops. I was in perhaps the most boring store known to woman.

And I found the perfect jeans there.

As I faced the Eddie Bauer wall of denim, next to a woman in her 50s who was fingering the “classic tailored” style, I had a serious identity crisis. What am I doing here? I’m not interested in the “loose fit” jeans that look like they come above your belly-button. I do not want a pair of drawstring khakis for weekending! This even worse than Anchor Blue!

Then I saw that they had a boot cut style. Then I looked at the sizes, and realized that instead of being the largest possible size (which I always am at juniors stores), my size was right in the middle. Each size came in three lengths: long, regular, and short. Colors were gently faded denim, or a standard Levi’s blue.

I tried on a pair. The waistline came just below the bellybutton, and a tiny bit above the hips. My ass was not hanging out, and when I did the kneel-down test my back tattoo showed, but my butt crack did not. The legs flared just enough, but not so much that I had raver flashbacks.

It was then that I realized that yes: I will be turning 30 next year. And yes: I think I just found my new favorite jeans at Eddie Fucking Bauer.

It was inevitable, I suppose: I still love teenager clothes, but when it comes to basics, I don’t want jeans that make a statement. Can you believe it? I just want jeans that fit. And I found them at a store for women. Not juniors, but women.

It was a strange moment for me, standing in line at Eddie Bauer listening to the painfully tasteful music piped in over the speakers. I was surrounded by women who look like they all live off of their husband’s retirement funds — but the jeans were moderately priced. I talked with the cashier about my plight. She was a middle-aged woman with frosted hair and a motherly body, and she sympathized with me. I felt sort of welcomed.

I think I’m finally an adult now. It scares me a little, but at least my ass isn’t hanging out.