1) Set dial to the 6-minute mark, because you want crunchy toast, and according to the picture, that is the crunchiest toast setting.

2) Forget to set dial to "Toast", leaving it on the settings from that cheese stick late-night snack the other night.

3) Stupidity © me.

An approximation of my thought process while the toast was on fire:

omg it's on fire but the lack of oxygen should probably make it stop by itself hmm should take a pic before it goes out ok unplug the thing dousing with water in there would probably be bad oh crap the fire alarm is going off damn it's hella loud shut up how do i get it to stop i can't pull the cover off yargh ahh hey it's still burning my theory was not correct i should try to take it out of there but i only have wooden chopsticks won't those get set on fire too if i go in there with them oh well i'll be really fast ok here goes omg omg shut up fire alarm boosh ok now i'm safe. whew.