You're Fired

When I was a small child, perhaps six years old, my father talked with my mother about someone who did something bad at work. My father said that they fired him. I believed that this meant that they threw him into a stove and burnt him up. I still have a clear picture in my mind of a huge stove with a roaring fire inside and a door big enough to throw in a bad grown-up. I became afraid that if I were not good my parents would also fire me by throwing me into a big stove.