Watch A Blind Man Guess The Color Of Markers Based On Their Smell

Tommy Edison is a blind man, there’s nothing else spectacular about him. Not really. But when you watch the video of him trying to figure out the color of markers by their smell, you understand the power of simple charm. Youtube is festooned with wannabe starlets and braggadocious dudes trying to be funny. Most of them are not, but The Tommy Edison Experience is the real deal.

It’s difficult to pick out the best part of this video. Is it the way Tommy holds the marker to his nose for a quick sniff, but keeps bringing it back up like a junkie trying to huff just one more time? Perhaps you, like me, were enthralled with Tommy’s gregarious laughter each time he got one right. I found myself wanting him to get each one right, not because I wanted him to win, but simply because he seemed so tickled. Except on the brown, while he got that one right he didn’t know cinnamon was brown. To be honest, while the cassia bark we know of as cinnamon is indeed brown, don’t we associate cinnamon with a rusty red color? I mean, cinnamon candies are typically red.

Upon loading the video, watching Tommy sit in the room and prepare to take the challenge, I thought to myself that this is very reminiscent of Leonard’s review of Let’s Potato Chips on Community. So much so that I double checked this wasn’t some Dan Harmon organized Youtube channel, or something Channel 101 related. It’s not. Perhaps the Leonard Youtube channel on Community is just as apt at lampooning the entertainingly mundane real Youtube channels as the rest of the show is at exploring what it means to be a sitcom.

In any case, Tommy sets himself a goal to get four out of nine correct in the endeavor. As the video goes along and he’s getting the colors wrong you do feel a slight tickle of awkwardness. Except that Tommy insists that everything is red. The best part of this early section is when he’s told the yellow should smell like lemon. “It does,” Tommy comments. “Now that you mention it, it smells like Pledge.” Yet he still said red. This is a blow to my prejudices, since I was certain that those who had been blind all their life would have super powered smell abilities. Although I’m holding out hope that the marker companies are just incapable of making clear smelling markers.

The Tommy Edison Experience is an interesting way to get a small glimpse into the life of a blind man. He’s a dude, ordinary for the most part, who has a Youtube channel. You have to admit, even if the question never came to mind, you do kind of wonder how a blind man reads Instagram comments.