Recently, I visited my doctor’s office because of sinus congestion. After peering up my nostrils, she took a look in my ears. My left one was clogged and then she moved to the right ear. “Hmmm,” she murmured, “There seems to be a problem with your ear drum here. I see a strange deposit on the wall of the ear drum.”
Inwardly, I groaned. And then I remembered back to the fateful day, 21 years ago: The Silly Putty Debacle.
It was a gloriously sunny day in 1986 and I was babysitting the children of a family friend. I had strict instructions to make the kids wear earplugs if they wanted to go into the pool. When the time came to go swimming, I searched high and low for some earplugs, but they eluded me. The little boy told me that sometimes they used Silly Putty as ear plugs when they went swimming.
Silly Putty was readily abundant in a house with children, so I snapped off a few globs and stuffed it into the kids’ ears. For good measure, I stuffed some in my ears too. Oh, the folly. After a few hours, they tired of swimming. I plucked the putty from their ears without incident.
I hadn’t been swimming for the final hour; instead, I’d been sunning myself to a healthy crisp. Heat and Silly Putty are a poor combination, as I was to learn. The heat made the Silly Putty turn tacky and as I struggled to pull it from my ears, it resisted and stretched like taffy being pulled.
Despite my best efforts with a Q-tip, I only managed to shove the putty FURTHER into my right ear. I phoned my mother and she raced over and took me (and the kids) to the hospital. The doctor came in and had me lay my head on a pillow as he began to hoover the bits and pieces of Silly Putty from my ear with a medical vacuum. In true Curly Wurly Gurly fashion, I grew nauseous and spewed a font of vomit all over.
I was so dizzy and queasy that the doctor ceased vacuuming away my equilibrium and told me I would not suffer any permanent damage and the remaining Silly Putty could stay in my ear without causing any problems.
What this doctor neglected to mention was that every time another doctor looked into my ear for the rest of my life, he or she would see the Silly Putty and ask me about it. Luckily, my hearing isn’t 100% in the Putty ear and I can barely hear them when they laugh at my retreating back as I depart the office, humiliated.
I can’t…I can’t even finish that story. :shudder:
So are you now Putty-Free?
Stuffing Silly Putty in little kids’ ears?
Well, at least it makes me feel better about spraying oven cleaner in my sister’s eye when she was 8 yrs old (I could have sworn that the sprayer was set to “OFF” and not “STREAM”!)
Hope you are on the mend!
what a long and wandering story. i edited for length–not a big help–and for clarity.
the silly putty incident happened when i was 12 and doctors today can still see the silly putty and ask me about it relentlessly. so, i’m not 100% silly putty free, but i wear my freakiness as a badge.
Being a life long big fan of Silly Putty I have a long list of places I stuck Silly Putty, but ears (mine or anyone else’s) did not make the list.
I still have a big gob of Silly Putty at home that I add to from time to time. It’s about the size of a small orange right now.
Jimsmuse – HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHHHH!!!
OH Curly – you poor thing!! I hate to laugh at your misfortune, but this story is too funny. If it is any consolation, I am a freak too and there is strength in numbers. YAY!
Growing up, my best friend’s brother stuck peanuts up his nose & had to go to the hospital to get them out.
Oh the visual!!! **laughing!!**
Oh my gosh!
I too have strict rules about ears in pools. I have to stick silly putty type goo into K’s and B’s ears because of tubes but it doesn’t get stuck in the ears. I may be rethinking this and just sticking with headbands that cover their ears, the poor kids. I couldn’t imagine having it stuck in their ears forever.
My profession just happens to involve looking regularly into peoples’ ears.
I remember asking one woman who was bringing her dad some distance to see me, to ensure that he had his ears checked for wax, before visiting. On examination, there was a considerable amount of the offending material, which was rock solid, and I reminded her of this request.
Without comment, she hunted-about in her handbag, found a kirby-grip (for those who do not know about it, it was a thin bent piece of metal with a rounded end,used to hold hair back in place). Quick as a flash he handed it to her father, looked at him severely, and said ‘There you are, get on with it’….thereby implying that he could start ‘howking’ the wax out of his ear.
For one of the few times in my career, I was speechless!
I’m sorry for your embarrassment, but I was very happy to read your story. I found this site by googling “silly putty, ear.” Why was I googling that you ask? Because I had a very similar situation involving getting silly putty stuck in my own ear a couple weeks ago. I was reading, and fidgeting with silly putty, and without even realizing it (my ear must have itched? I don’t even know!) I put the silly putty in my ear. Like you, a q-tip and any attempts to remove it only made it worse. For the record, I am a 23 year old phd student. My friends urged me to go to the hospital, but I simply couldn’t bring myself to go to an emergency room and explain this situation. My ear seems to be fine, I can hear, just slightly muffled from time to time.