Today in "Awful Trends That Shouldn't Have Happened in the First Time" News....

YOU GUYS.

I was at Macy's the other day (in my great search for the perfect sunglasses that lasted like, three weeks) and I encountered a horrifying sight.

There, parked in the foyer of the store, was a huge display of...

MINI. BACKPACKS.

Like, just take a moment to let that soak in. 

They looked like this:

....and they were $250.

Say it isn't SO! Mini backpacks were a terrible idea in 1998 and I don't know why they're back.

When I was 14, I saved all of the money I made from cleaning my aunt's house (which was a pricey $20 per week) to purchase what I understood to be the height of fashion back in 1998 – a mini backpack. It was $19.99 and it was beautiful. In fact, my two best friends and I all bought the same one so we could be stylin' when we were chauffeured to the mall by our parents for the afternoon. We would eat Chinese food in the food court and buy all of the plastic accessories and baby t-shirts with sassy sayings on them that we could handle. All while keeping our chore money and Bonne Bell stowed safely in our randomly tiny backpacks with leather straps. And just because I know you're dying to know, they were brown and navy plaid and inexplicably furry.

Do you notice the key fact about the above story?

I'll give you a hint. What the heck, I'll just tell you. This isn't a mystery book. It's the fact that it was 1998 and I was 14.

If these two factors are true for you, I'll congratulate you for both understanding how to operate electronic devices and discovering the secret to time travel. Because those are the only two reasons anyone should ever be able to wear a mini backpack. Ever. In the history of mankind.

I always cringe when I see a grown woman wearing a mini backpack. First of all, they're so tiny that they make everyone look massive in comparison. I was probably a size 0 at age 14, and I still wandered around looking like a complete linebacker with my tiny backpack. Add 16 years and two pregnancy's worth of baby fat to the mix and wearing a mini backpack would in fact make me look like the Incredible Hulk.

Secondly, they are super unnecessary. It's like the designer of the mini backpack took a look at a regular backpack and said, "You know what would be cool? If we shrunk this down to an eighth of its size so it was both harder to access and infinitely less convenient for storing anything other than child-sized Chapstick." 

Then he instantly created a miracle and we all have mini backpacks stored in the attic.

To me, the mini backpack is as completely offensive as the fanny pack. And we all know how lame fanny packs are, despite designers constantly trying to make them cool and the fact that Samantha wore one on "Sex and the City." Some things are never cool, no matter how much positive PR they've had.

Mini backpacks and fanny packs are the Charlie Sheen of the fashion world. He could save 500 children from a burning building and people would still be like, "Ehh…"

Don't lower your standards. If you had a complete lapse of sense and in fact purchased a $250 designer mini backpack, please immediately gift your mini backpack to your time-traveling teenager or donate it to someone who enjoys a lack of storage and the necessity of removing one's backpack every time one needs to get a debit card. 

As for wearing it, let's remember the Cardinal Rule of Trends: If you wore it the first time it was popular, you don't get to do it again. Particularly if you were 14 during the last cycle.

In the meantime, Michael Kors and I are going to have words.  

So, sound off: A) Did you ever have a mini backpack? And B) Did you immediately kill it with fire once you realized how ridiculous it was?