Jeans in the mail --- Stacie demonstrates maturity.

Because I am now 25, I am incredibly more mature than I was at 24. Take Wednesday, for example, when I contained my giggles in law class. We were discussing Cohen v. California, which involved a young man entering a courthouse wearing a jacket which said "F--- the draft." (It was Vietnam.) So I got to listen to my professor, my classmates, and the lawyers (we listened to the oral arguments before the Supreme Court) say the F word all morning. It made me giggle. (On a side note, Cohen won, making the F-word one of the few constitutionally protected words -- at least when worn on a jacket.)

OK -- so maybe that's not the best example of my new-found maturity.

However, I shopped recently and demonstrated my maturity. I have a problem with jeans. I have always been hard on my clothes. When I was little, the biggest problems I had was wearing holes in the knees of all my pants. This happened due to the fact that I often liked to pretend I was a dog or fox and therefore would crawl around. While I don't do that anymore, I still have a problem with my jeans blowing holes in them, usually in the inner thigh region (blast! those soccer thighs!).

So I had worn through my most recent pair of jeans, which had been purchased at Old Navy. I decided that since I am a college student, jeans (and not just capri jeans) are incredibly important to have. After discussing this with Hal, we decided that I needed to buy a pair of jeans that would last longer than a year, which seems to be my breaking point. His idea was that I needed to spend more money than the $20 I usually spend on the pants to get something with more quality.

Now, those of you who know me know I'm not a label person. I could care less where my clothes come from. In fact, my jeans in high school often came from the Carrollton outlets. I had a pair once that cost $8. Sigh, the good ol' days.

So I asked around. If you are a girl, you know that pants are funny things. Sometimes they fit. Sometimes another pair in the same size do not fit. Sometimes they fit one day and not the next.

Upon the recommendation from one of my friends, I decided to look at - gasp! - Lane Bryant.

Now, Lane Bryant is a store for larger women. Said friend told me that she wasn't recommending it to me because she thought I was fat (perish the thought!) but because she randomly had a pair of jeans from LB and it is her favorite pair.

Because I am now mature, I was more concerned that the blasted things fit than I was about the idea that I was going into a store for larger women. I marched into the store and declared my largesse to the world.

What a fantastic experience! LB has a new line of jeans psychologically programmed to make you feel better about yourself. They are organized by color and then resized. I wear a 2! A TWO! I didn't wear a two when I was two. My Lord, I don't know what single digits on pant labels look like! I would buy all the jeans in the store that put me in a two! Fantastic! Even better, I was a two PETITE! I feel skinnier by the moment! Even though the petite just means I'm short, it also implies the sleek body of a supermodel. America's Next Top Model, here I come! If I continue to run/walk with Layla, sometime LB might not let me in the store because I will have exercised myself right out of their sizes. Oh yes...one day.

Of course, the store didn't stock very many twos. In fact, they only had one in the lighter color I wanted. Of course. They were also running a special.

Which is why I bought three pairs of jeans off the Internet. Originally $40 a pair, I got the three of them for $56, including shipping. I am an Internet shopping queen.

They came in the mail today, and wouldn't you know, they all fit! Of course, each of them fits a little differently, because that's apparently how girls' clothes roll.

But I now have jeans and will be able to look like a real college student again. I put them on after admiring the inside label in a sort of narcotic single-digit pants size haze. I never knew, ladies, what all the fuss was about. Even though this single digit is a hoax because in every other store I would still be in a double digit, I still feel amazed at my skinny mini-ness.

Then I will put out of my mind the pros and cons of being a two in LB as opposed to the horrific number I will see in a month when I get measured for a bridemaid's dress. I will, like a woman of supreme confidence and love for herself, befriend my body, even with all its quirks and annoyances. I will accept myself and envision myself not on America's Next Top Model, but the Dove Real Beauty campaign.

After all, that's what a mature person would do. Right?