It’s too late to stop people from dismissing each other’s ear conditions as lack of hygiene or whatever but here’s something to know: There are two different kinds of ear wax. If you are blessed with the dry kind, then you will rarely have issues - it will just fall out. If you have the sticky kind it can build up and require water flushing or more to remove. A large bulb syringe with hot water works well enough - anything that requires more than that can be done by your doctor. Tools like this are just an infection waiting to happen.
I had a similar experience. The thing I wasn’t expecting that went with it was the loss of balance - I was wobbly for a few hours until it settled down.
Looks like the kind of thing that might be found up someone’s anus.
On the subject of q tips, I really wonder about all these people who supposedly puncture their eardrums. Are they stupid or clumsy?Seems like anyone with a modicum of dexterity and knowledge can avoid puncturing skin with a blunt object.
I am in the group of people who doesn’t typically have a lot of built-up earwax, but is sometimes plagued by the overwhelming compulsion to get it out of there anyway.
I will gladly stipulate that no one should ever put anything smaller than their elbow into their ear – and Q-Tips strike me as stupid because you’ll just end up with lint-reinforced impacted wax – but personally I use a 1.5mm steel crochet hook and sometimes it is very satisfying.
I’m not sure about this design, but if I did choose to 3D print something similar, it wouldn’t be the first ear-rootin’ tool I had printed.
If you read German: this is the oldest reference I could find to the term (in the five minutes of research I did, strictly online and in my lunch break).
It’s from the mid 18th century and interestingly enough at this point at least it doesn’t refer to a lance or spear but to a club, specifically one that Duke Ferdinand says would be used to “open the ears” of the rebellious Bohemians. So I think it’s more metaphorical even than “Arkansas toothpick”. It’s less “this looks a bit like an ear spoon” and more “you won’t listen to me? Well maybe you’ll listen to this”.
I assume the name (which I had never heard before) became canonised as a polearm only later, by the classification-obsessed arms researchers and collectors of the 19th and early 20th centuries.