Why do we need ear plugs?
To give ourselves a few moments of rest. To retreat from the hurley-burly of the day. To go to sleep. To meditate. To drown the roar of an airplane’s engines. To escape that most annoying noise from the TV down the hall. In short, for what we think of a privacy–to be alone with our own thoughts.
What kind of ear plugs?
The soft foam-rubber kind. E.A.R. is a favorite brand. Flents now makes an equivalant type. They must be a cylindrical. You roll them between your thumb and forefinger, then insert them into your ear beyond the outer lobe so that when they expand, the completely fill that passageway leading to the eardrum.
What’s a bad ear plug?
Any that is made of a solid material, such as wax, or rubber; the idea is to block the sound waves–a solid will conduct the sound waves.
Bad Idea: a cone-shaped foam plug. You might look at these and say, Yes, my ear passage narrows as it goes inside, so I should get an earplug to fit. But you don’t want an exact fit: you want to fill up the passageway. The foam is foam so that it can expand to fill up that space.
Doesn’t this get rather expensive?
Not at all, as the foam rubber cylinder can be laundered and re-used. Save the pairs of earplugs after you use them; when you have collected enough, put them into a bag made for delicate fabrics, and run them through the washing machine and drier. They’ll come out fresh and ready to be re-used.
My used earplugs get rather un-soft.
Soften the earplugs by hydrateing them. You can hold them in your hand for a while; you can breath on them, for a quick hydration; put them in a shirt pocket, near your skin–you are perspiring and exhaling all the time through your skin, which will soften up the foam shortly. Probably not something you want to share.
