Hello, children!

My name is George, and I'm a toad.

I have a lot of common sense, and so can you!

My job is to show you how common sense can be applied to situations you might find yourself in.

Today’s subject is:

Toast

Toast is a very versatile thing to eat. You can put marmalade on it for your breakfast and even put baked beans on it for your tea!

But toast can also be very dangerous, such as in this cautionary tale.

Once upon a time there was a boy named Billy, and Billy liked to eat toast. He had toast at every meal.

Luckily Billy's mummy was a very sensible mummy and did not allow him to use the toaster by himself. But one day Billy's mummy was poorly and couldn’t make his toast for him, so Billy decided that he would try to do it by himself.

Billy got a chair from the dining room so he could reach the toaster, carefully selected two slices of thick-cut white bread and put them in the toaster. Then he fiddled with the controls a bit, pressed the lever and went to play while waiting for the toaster to pop.
Unfortunately when Billy was playing with the controls he had turned the heat control all the way up to ten and within minutes the kitchen was on fire.

The fire brigade got there in time to rescue Billy, and Billy's mummy, and Billy's goldfish Jeff, but the kitchen was left as a burned out shadow of its former self and had to be completely re-fitted.

Billy is all grown up now and is pathologically terrified of toasters.

You see, Billy did not apply common sense to the situation... if he had thought it through he would have first made sure that his mummy really was too poorly to make the toast, and if it turned out she was he should have read the toaster’s manual before attempting to operate it.

What's that? Why couldn't Billy have got his daddy to do it? I don't know, I don't write these bloody stories.

Anyway, the moral is that if a grown up isn't able to help, you should always make sure you have an intimate knowledge of what you are trying to do and obey all the safety procedures recommended by the manufacturer.