First Kiss

This summer we decided to take a family trip to Hunza.

For the love of family and the doubtful pleasure of squabbling over the window seat with a gaggle of toddlers and alleged adults for a full week. I decided to give up my creature comforts-

Bidding adieu to reliable WiFi, and the ability to put more than two feet between myself and another human being -and abscond to the mountains for a week of enforced familial bonding and fresh mountain air.

My siblings and I are, for the most part-carbohydrate based life forms.

So, we had planned to make a stop every two hours to meet our carb quota and avoid unwarranted "incidents".

As is the wont of most kids. Ours too, have obnoxious pea-sized bladders and were thus, determined to use these stops to intimately acquaint themselves with every rest room along the way.

Most, if not of all of these rest rooms did not live up to their exacting standards and each visit was inevitably punctuated by exclamations of horrified disgust.

Adjectives like "filthy" and "literal shit hole" , may have been bandied about.

Having travelled quite a bit in small town Punjab. I had a good idea of what to expect.

But, my kids are sheltered Karachi Wallas. Who rarely, if ever leave the city .

My youngest, especially has an unnatural love for sparkling en-suite bathrooms and their cushy accoutrements.

Given this reality, he was vocally disapproving of the less than sanitary arrangements that the mountain villages along the way, had to offer.

At the time I didn't pay him much heed.

I advised him to tone down the drama and use his natural advantage to learn how to pee standing up.

Khair, we survived the week of family time and as soon as we'd gotten back to civilization. We hastened to rid ourselves of that wholesome mountain glow by indulging in an evening of unbridled consumerism and following it up with a movie and plastic popcorn .

Cinepax had lovely bathrooms. Fragrant and meticulously maintained.

They were shiny. They were clean. There was chrome and air conditioning. They had the sort of floors you could eat your dinner off, that is off course. if you were so inclined.

They were the antithesis of the hole in the ground/bucket combo which the mountains had served up with dismaying regularity.

My youngest dashed from the entrance of the cinema to the rest rooms.

He ran into a bathroom stall and kissed-I SHIT YOU NOT- Kissed the bloody toilet seat.

That little fucker actually genuflected and kissed a toilet seat.

My kid is broken.

The mountains broke him.

I suspect we may have scarred him for life.