So Fine

Quite obviously today is Valentine's Day. Maybe you were expecting some sort of lovey-dovey post, and I would have liked to have written you a love story, but I don't have any. So instead I'm going to tell you a bit about one of my biggest loves: the public library.

I hope you love this mushy picture so much that you print it off and hang it on your computer monitor.

The public library is a bit like a boyfriend in the sense that every time I go there, I feel like I am cuddled up in arms. The pages hold me. However, there is one bad aspect to the library. You know how you might borrow your boyfriend's sweatshirt for a while? And then he's just thankful when he gets it back? Well, I'm sorry to say this, but the library charges you for returning borrowed items late. They're called library fines.

The library system that I belong to lets your fines get up to five dollars before they don't let you check out anymore. After that, you have to pay up or move states.

Here's how I sort of get out of paying library fines and still get to check things out. I turn my overdue books in right before I check out, then when they ask me if I've returned anything today (because they know I have late material), I say yes. But they haven't scanned the books in yet, so it doesn't get charged to me until the next time I go to the library. The bad part is you cannot even place holds if you owe more than 5 bucks.

Last Saturday I returned about four audio-books three days late, and I got charged a dollar for each of them. So now my library fines are $8.35 Quite obviously, I need to get this debt under control. I am planning a trip to the library this coming Thursday (I have 17 books due and I've already renewed them once). If I want to check out anything, I'll have to cough up the cash to get my fines down to $4.99. The library's really funny that way. Once (okay, I lie, many times), I had my fine at $5, so I hand over a paper dollar, and you know what the lady in glasses says? "Do you want to apply the whole dollar?" Like it's a big burden on me financially. Because really, I could pay two cents and be good. I smile at her and say "yes, use all of it," like I've been saving up for years for a down payment on a house.

Basically, the bad part about my love for the library is that it charges me sometimes. I had been debt free for years and years, always returning my books on time. Just about everything I've been fined on was a book that I used in my classroom, left there, and forgot about it. It's easy to forget about your public library books when there are already so very many books in the room.

 So there you have it. The library is my love. And it gives me much more than it takes.