Jeans

One early Saturday, I set off into town with a simple mission.

To buy a pair of normal jeans as the autumns just landed with rain and loose leaves.

What do I want not jeans that promise good luck at the casino.

Not jeans designed for influencers.

Not jeans guaranteed to attract insistent glances every time I sit down at a café

Not the the gardening style with outer pockets of tradie style either.

Just jeans.

On the other hand, not so loose that they could accommodate a lunch box, an umbrella, a water bottle, and still leave room for a hat and gloves.

Surely that wasn't too much to ask.

I walked into the first store.

"I'm looking for a pair of classic jeans," I said.

Two sales assistants paused their scrolling. Instagram? TikTok? A live stream of someone unboxing another pair of jeans? Who knows.

They looked at me with the same expression a physics professor might wear when someone asks where the universe ends.

"Classic?"

"Yes."

"You mean loose fit?"

"No."

"Skinny?"

"No."

"Slim?"

"No."

"Tapered?"

"No."

"Then what?"

I paused for a few seconds.

"Jeans."

The younger assistant looked genuinely concerned.

The other one wrote something on her mobile losing already all the vague interes

Probably:

"Customer confused. Oldies are going in town way to much these days"

When I took out my reading glasses to inspect the fabric and the price tag, I felt I had confirmed her diagnosis.

I sighed and left the shop, followed by one last puzzled glance from both assistants before they returned to the comforting glow of their screens.

In the second store, I tried on a pair.

They went up to my knees.

That was it.

I stood there staring down at them.

Perhaps, with enough encouragement and positive thinking, they might eventually continue the journey upward.

After a minute, I accepted reality.

The jeans had spoken.

They had no intention of meeting the rest of my legs.

I took a deep breath and moved on.

It looked as though the manufacturer had taken measurements from a real women divide By two and declared them the new international fashion standard.

In the third store, I was introduced to something called a "barrel fit."

"It fits beautifully around the waist," the assistant explained.

She was right.

The waist fit perfectly.

The problem began immediately below it.

I turned around and attempted to locate my backside.

All I could see was what appeared to be a large blue tent ending somewhere above my ankles.

I stepped out of the fitting room.

Maybe from a distance it would look better.

I don't normally have such a close relationship with my backside, but this time I was concerned.

It seemed to have gone missing.

Possibly relocated.

Maybe it had escaped while I was changing.

The sales assistant looked at me expectantly.

"Well?"

"I think my legs might resent being hidden inside this portable accommodation."

"Excuse me?"

"It looks ideal for camping."

She didn't laugh.

I laughed enough for both of us.

I continued my search through the city centre.

More shops.

More mirrors.

More labels.

More words ending in "fit."

At some point I became distracted and bought a pink thermos and a pair of socks covered in smiling avocados.

Neither item had been on my shopping list.

Yet somehow they felt easier to understand than modern denim.

Hours passed.

I walked through bright shop windows filled with thousands of colours and styles.

At one point I almost forgot what I had come for.

Then I spotted a magnificent pair of black boots and spent ten minutes admiring them before remembering my original mission.

By now I had begun to suspect that classic jeans had become a mythical creature.

Like fairies.

Or free parking spaces.

Or Monday with no road works"

Just when I was ready to give up, I wandered into TK Maxx.

Not because I expected to find jeans.

Simply because after several hours of shopping, a person begins entering any building that offers air conditioning and reduced expectations.

I wandered past kitchen gadgets, camping equipment, dog toys, suitcases, scented candles, and decorative objects whose purpose remains a mystery to this day.

And then I saw them.

They weren't jeans.

They were trekking trousers.

I tried them on.

First, I sat down.

Nothing happened.

No alarming stretching noises. No feeling that the seams were preparing a formal letter of resignation.

Encouraged, I stood up again.

Still good.

I walked across the fitting room.

Then back again, just to be sure.

The trousers followed obediently, instead of fighting every movement like a stubborn shopping trolley with a broken wheel.

I climbed two steps outside the fitting room.

Then two more.

At this point I had become suspicious. No pair of trousers had behaved this reasonably all day.

To eliminate any remaining doubt, I performed the ritual squat of the sceptical shopper.

Halfway down, I paused and waited for disaster.

Nothing.

No tightening around the knees.

No sensation that my circulation had been permanently interrupted.

No urgent need for a rescue team.

I stood up triumphantly.

Then I bent over to tie an imaginary shoelace.

Success.

I stretched.

Success again.

For the first time all day, the trousers seemed to understand the radical concept that human beings occasionally sit, walk, bend, and generally move about in the world.

I was beginning to think I hadn't found trousers at all.

I had found a miracle.