See, that blew me away. This kid A.J. can tap liters of soda like tuning forks and name the flavor from their pitch. My question is, if he came out and did that on the America’s Got Talent stage, would he get a standing ovation? I’d stand and clap but I worry that it would go right over the head of the simpleton audience. Some people need a 6-year-old singing Still Dre to get their juices flowing. That show has become a carousel of pimped-out children demonstrating underdeveloped skills before their first beer. Meanwhile, you’ve got kids like A.J. utilizing his Wolverine hearing to identify the subtle pitch differences between Coke and Coke Zero. THAT is talent.
The first one is my favorite. “Ginger ale,” he says with a slight smirk on his face, as if to say “stop wasting my fucking time.” Then he mows down the Fanta before arriving at his old nemeses, the Cokes. But, knowing that the hardest out of a perfect game is the 27th, he takes his time and double taps the Coke Zero before rendering his verdict. “This is the tough one,” he says theatrically, setting us up to believe that AJ MIGHT—just MIGHT—stumble at the last.
But of course not. He’s a professional. That was all for show, like a strong man saying “don’t try this at home” before bending a flag pole into a horseshoe. He’s the ultimate showman, setting us up, bringing us to the edge of our seats for the grand finale. Well played, AJ.
Here’s something I’ve always wondered though—if AJ’s hearing is enhanced due to his lack of eyesight, does that mean he’ll hear annoying sounds more acutely too? Will he be that much more bothered when his girlfriend tells him she can’t understand why they haven’t enabled location sharing on their phones when every other couple she knows has done so? I can see those arguments hitting AJ ten times harder than a someone who hears at a civilian level. But I hope not, for his sake.