You’re probably not going to believe me, but a stern warning in tiny font appears in ALL-CAPS on every box of Q-tips cotton swabs. It reads, in part: WARNING: DO NOT INSERT SWAB INTO EAR.

I know, you don’t believe me. Please go check the Q-tips box in your bathroom drawers, probably the bottom one with the scum and gross hair in the corners. I’ll wait here.

See?!? I’ll bet you read the box and said something along the lines of “Huh?” — only in more colourful, unprintable language — then followed it up with the totally reasonable question: “What else am I supposed to do with a Q-tip?”

The good people at Elida Beauty, the multinational that now owns the Q-tips brand, have included small illustrations on the box to help us correctly use their product. The illustrations … uh, illustrate the following officially sanctioned purposes:

• blend and apply eye shadow

• apply and soften lipstick

• remove mascara smudges

• touch-up and remove nail polish.

I don’t know about you, but I’m never going to do more than two of those things. When I reach for a Q-tip, I am hoping to mine for gold, so to speak. More specifically, my plan is to remove huge gobs of disgusting earwax from my head.

Nothing else will do. My fingers are too large for this venture, and “ear........

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