Not stupid at all. I am very self conscious about exactly that kind of stuff, with my oil heat and gas water heater... and feeling embarrased in general.

MJ is right, let the oil guy start the heater for you. Its part of their job. Have him show you how he does it so you will know next time. It is probably easy... on mine there is a cutoff switch in the hallway and an electronic restart switch on the furnace itself. Once I called for repair because my heat went out, and the guy came for a service call and it turned out all it needed was to be restarted. I didn't even know that restart switch existed. I got the last laugh though because it went out again a few hours later, and hitting the restart switch didn't work, so the guy had to come out to my house again the very same day. When he got there the first thing he asked was did I try the restart switch like he told me to. DUH of course I did, he specifically showed it to me. Turns out there was a problem with that whole electronic part, the safety shutdown was malfunctioning and kept shutting the furnace down for no reason. He had to replace it.

I still wish I had known about it, I always like to try the simple things first before calling for repair (but not tinker with stuff I don't understand... that could be dangerous). If I had known that, it would have saved the double service call, because on the first visit I could have told him I tried the restart switch but the furnace shut down again in a little while.

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