The WooHoo Wish

The WooHoo Wish

One of the oddities in The Sims series has been its reproduction process, which interestingly enough has evolved with the games as each new expansion and series was released.  The changes happened in small ways to start, but in major ways as well -- for example originally there was always a chance to get pregnant, but now the game allows your Sims to WooHoo without any possibility of pregnancy, and when you want them to get pregnant, the option to "Try for a Baby" has an increased likelihood of success.

In the older games once you Sim became pregnant it started a timer and, when that clock ran out no matter where they were, the stork delivered a baby which just popped into existence nearby them.  This was a pretty startling experience the first time that it happened -- but that too has evolved to the point that your Sim goes through a standard pregnancy period complete with belly-bump that in addition to providing the opportunity to snap a few pictures of pregnant Mom for the family album, also offered your Sim the opportunity to throw a baby shower!

It seems that WooHoo has come a long way in the history of the game, but never so far as it has with the Late Night expansion...

-- The Emergence of WooHoo as an Art Form --

The new urban jungle provides your Sims with what is generally called a "target-rich environment" when it comes to potential romantic interests, relationship candidates, and just plain old booty-call material -- and in recognition of that and one of the notorious stereotypes associated with big city life the developers have thrust WooHoo to new heights and a new focus with the introduction of a new Lifetime Wish: The Master Romancer.

Hint: Among the odd locations you can find for your Sims to WooHoo in are elevators (Lifts) and certain stairwells...

Admittedly it is still possible to fulfill the requirements for this new wish in all of the old towns -- but the metropolis of Bridgeport does offer advantages and perhaps makes it a bit easier to find and relate to the five different Sims your Sim must WooHoo with, and of course in finding five distinct and different locations for that WooHoo'ing to take place, which is another requirement.

Did you ever wonder how the word for sex in the Sims got to be called "Woohoo" and Woohooing?  There is actually a story behind it, and it starts with the name of one real-world boy who was very famous in his day: Ellsworth "Sonny" Wisecarver Jr.

Love in an elevator, taking you up while going down...

Yes, his real name really was Ellsworth"Sonny" Wisecarver Jr. -- and while his parents and friends called him "Sonny" the news media and pretty much the rest of the world knew him better as both "The Woo Woo Kid" and "The WooHoo Kid (sometimes spelled Woohoo and Woo Hoo."  If you are guessing that he is famous for having sex, well, yes, he was -- but probably not the way that you might be thinking...

You see, Sonny WooHoo Wisecarver became infamous in 1944 for having intimate affairs with several older women -- the facts about which were made public knowledge thanks to a tip-off to the media by a public official.  It was not so much that he had sex with older women -- even in 1944 that sort of thing went on pretty commonly -- no, the uncommon element was that he was just 14-years-old the first time that he became involved with an older woman, who happened to be married and the mother of two children!

News of his behavior sparked a public scandal that was covered extensively and nationwide by newspapers and radio news programs at the time, primarily because of his age but also because after being hauled into court over the illicit affair, taking his punishment, and being warned by the judge not to do it again -- he did it again just a year later!   While the first case received wide coverage on the West Coast, it was his second adventure that brought him to nationwide fame, and it did not help matters for him that his second love was arrested and charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor, whereupon she granted interviews to any reporter who asked and was not discrete about protecting her own or his reputation.

Eventually Sonny was declared an incorrigible delinquent and spent some time in the California Youth Authority penal facility for juveniles before going on to live largely in obscurity save for some interesting anecdotal appearances in history -- for example his story was one of the events at the end of WWII that was thought to have hastened the sexual revolution -- the logic to that connection being simply the fact that the news media covered the event so widely and without coaching their language.

In 1987 a film that was loosely based upon the events was made called "In the Mood," in which Wisecarver appeared in a small role as a mailman. The movie starred Patrick Dempsey, who played the role of Sonny Wisecarver, and helped to restore the colorful image of that post-war scandal into the minds and imagination of modern America -- including some video game developers in California.  So in addition to helping spark the sexual revolution, providing entertaining (if shocking) stories for people to read in the newspaper, and providing Patrick Dempsey with a role in a movie, Sonny also helped to give a game an inoffensive euphemism for the deed!  And how cool is that?