Toohey

In 2013, I brought home a pre-release version of the Xbox One (we called it a zebra). The Xbox One came with the Kinect device, which had a microphone that allowed you to turn the Xbox on and off with your voice, among other things.

I was working on Xbox One and was all in on using the new features. So, at the end of every night, we would say, “Xbox Turn Off”, get up, get Toohey up, and get him to go outside to use the toilet. After a couple of weeks, we noticed that Toohey would always get himself up, have a stretch, and then go to the back door anytime we said the magic three words.

We used the Kinect for about a year and then decided not to have a continuously running microphone in our house. However, for the next decade, we would say “Xbox Turn Off” when we were going to bed, and Toohey kept getting up to go to the back door.