Breathing my Mind into Your Face

I like my chocolate chip banana bread toasted with butter. I’m a fat boy like that. This batch of my wife’s bread was especially doughy. The slice I put in the toaster was wide. I shoved it between the toaster’s prison bars and tried to start the toaster. No heat, no buttons lit up, bread stuck at bottom. My wife yelled at me for putting crumbly bread like that in the toaster. I reasoned that I’d done it many times previously without issue. I promised to order a replacement toaster right away to be delivered the next day. My wife committed to bring a toaster to the golf outing our educational foundation is putting on tomorrow, so a working toaster is vital to ensuring the success of operation Pop Tart in advance of the shotgun start.

Yesterday the new four slice toaster arrived. It cost $36. Last night I decided to fix the old toaster that was plugged with banana bread. First, I tried using a cocktail shrimp fork to bring up the bread bits and chocolate chips from the bottom of the toaster. No luck so I moved on to a meat thermometer, trying in vain to hit the center of a dough ball with the point and bring it out. Again, no luck. I thought maybe a toothpick would do the trick but couldn’t find any in the kitchen drawers. I decided to expand my search for extraction implements to my toolbox. After failing to bring up any of the mess with a pair of needlenose pliers I thought, “If only I was a surgeon and had my tools, or perhaps if I owned the game operation I could get these big crumbs out of the toaster and release the blockage. Finally I flipped the toaster upside down and shook it out over the sink. Oh yeah, forgot about gravity. I plugged it back in and got that baby toasting again. Now the question is, do we bring 8 slices of capacity to the golf outing and try to return the new toaster to Amazon after, or just roll with our trusty Kitchen Aid?