This family paid $1,500 in overdue library book fees, but the story is actually *so* sweet

We have such a soft spot for libraries. They’re like, the only thing left in the world that is good and pure and warm! Naturally, one of our biggest fears is losing a library book, or worse, forgetting all about overdue library books for several decades and owing the library a bunch of money… which is exactly what happened to this family! Yeah, these library lovers had overdue library books that they straight up forgot about. It’s actually all pretty hilarious, TBH.

So here’s what happened: the Kramer family borrowed books regularly from the library, but, at one point, two overdue library books were just forgotten about. They ended up borrowing the books for 42 YEARS!

Jon Kramer was in his parents’ house this year when he came across the two books and realized what happened. As he explained in a letter,

“Unlike less enlightened folks, we loved our library! So much so in fact that we apparently absconded with part of it."

Our favorite part of this is how light-hearted they were about the debacle. We can definitely learn from this! According to The Washington Post, Kramer did some *major* math, and discovered that if the overdue books cost a nickel a day, and were missing for 31,046 days, the family should pay $1,552.30 to make up for this surprisingly hilarious mistake.

 They hilariously wrote to the library,

“It is our hope that you will refrain from calling the FBI to report this as international trafficking of stolen goods, and instead allow us the freedom of maintaining the ill-begotten literature on loan for the next 85 combined years or so, at which time we hope to make another payment to your venerable institution on their behalf.

Like, LOL! This is just the sort of lighthearted, touching story we needed to wrap up 2016. Now to check and see if we have any overdue library books we’ve forgotten about…