Shaving Cream Fight!

Take a look at these photos. Obviously, they are of the shaving cream fights we had on Sunday afternoon. We had three, one for each age group neighborhood— the Juniors, the Middlers, and the Seniors. On a sunny summer afternoon, romping around in your swimsuit with friends, sprinklers and water hoses going, is always a lot of fun. Add in cans of plain shaving cream, and you have a hilarious good time.

Calling this a “fight” isn’t exactly accurate. There’s no aggressive behavior, no goal of conquest. There are no teams or score kept to be announced in the end. For that matter, there’s no defined way for a shaving cream fight to end.

So what is it? Well, it requires only a few things: a grassy field, cans of shaving cream, and a group of fun-loving friends who are comfortable with each other and are willing to get messy. High tempo dance music is optional, but recommended.

It doesn’t take long for a shaving cream fight to begin. Without any prompting in fact, the girls know exactly what to do; squirt the white slippery foam on someone. Splatter the stuff on anyone nearby. Squirt some in your hand and plop it right on her head. Get as much shaving cream on everyone else as possible, even if they try to run away. Chase after them, and spray! Rub it all over their backs. Launch globs into their hair and help them create the most fabulous hairdo they’ve ever experienced.

Of course, as you chase, you’re being chased. As you spray shaving cream, it’s being sprayed on you too. Soon everyone is covered, slippery, and looking pretty silly. Most importantly, everyone is also laughing hysterically. The feeling of being covering in shaving cream, seeing your friends’ reactions, and watching the chaos of it all, are uniquely funny. Outside of camp, you’ll never see girls having this kind of deep, affirming fun, the kind of laughter that makes you pause to take a breath. A shaving cream fight like this taps into the the most genuine of celebratory joy.

With all these slippery kids, what’s more natural than sliding down a wet sheet of plastic? At camp, that’s completely natural! The gentle slope nearby our grassy landsports field makes a great place to spread out the slide. Soon the girls were taking turns sliding two at time. Run, launch, and slide on your belly. It’s a fun challenge to stay upright, but flipping and flopping as you slide is a fine way to go.

An afternoon shaving cream fight like this proves once again that these camp girls know how to have a good time with each other. The shaving cream, water hoses, and sheet of plastic didn’t make it great. Those bits served as a catalyst of sorts for the girls themselves to create the fun. Their positive relationship with each other, the trust and goodwill already proven through days of common experience, made that fun a possibility. You can imagine a group of random people who didn’t know each other would have a hard time having fun in a shaving cream fight. Especially adults! There’s no way that could happen. A camp shaving cream fight is inherently more genuine than what could happen among any other group of people.

Perhaps that’s true about a lot of things at Rockbrook— the authenticity of our relationships, each of us living and showing our real selves, makes us enjoy ourselves more. Knowing each other this well, relaxing into who we really are because we sense this community is here to support and encourage us, opens up a quality of experience that’s just out of reach ordinarily. I do think that’s part of what makes camp life so special and enjoyable for your girls, and truly for everyone here at Rockbrook. Blame it on the culture of camp, but there are real effects… even in something as simple as a shaving cream fight.