Turn it off!!

I left the oven on the other day.  All night.  My husband then told me that I could've burned the apartment down, all the while putting on his best impression of my father.

My dad was very insistent on turning everything off while I was growing up.  He still is, but I don't hear him anymore since I no longer live with him.  He has a mantra that he practically chants on his way out the door:  "Make sure you turn off and unplug everything.  And turn down the heat.  Make sure the doors are locked.  Did you turn off the curling iron??"
We have to unplug everything because appliances will blow up.  Heat is expensive.  We will be home invaded, tied to chairs, tortured, and shot if the doors aren't locked.  As for the curling iron...  that is something we haven't done in maybe 10-15 years, so I don't know why it's on the list.

He does have a point in some cases.  There was a rash of violent home invasions in our general area several years ago.  Also, gas prices are soaring, so why not save on the heating bill?  He and my mother do insist that they've known people who's TV exploded.  I'm not sure if they remember their names or not, but it happened!

His fear of fire has probably been honed by my sister and the few days of torture that she put him through when we first moved into our new house 12 years ago.  My sister was not yet fully trusted with stove top elements or the big oven, so my dad compromised and bought a toaster oven.  Not much damage you can do with those things, right?  The day after he bought it, I was sitting on the couch when my dad started yelling in the kitchen.  Suddenly he ran by holding the toaster oven over his head, flames blazing out of it.  He somehow managed to get the back door open and flung it out onto the snow-covered deck.  We then watched it in silence as it finished burning the remnants of the taco shells my sister had been "browning".  He then ranted and raved a bit, before returning it to the store and telling them it was defective.
Fast-forward to the next day.  My sister must've had another craving for toasty taco shells because she was at it again.  And once again it was flung out into the snow in a dramatic fashion.  One more "defective" toaster oven was returned to the store, and my sister was at once banned from using it without his supervision.

oops

Poor dad.  The stresses involved with having kids.

For the record, I may have left the oven on overnight, but last week my husband left a giant candle burning overnight.  There was little left of it in the morning and somehow it didn't burn through the tabletop.  Which one's worse??