“So have you seen ‘Titanic’ yet?” my barber asked me the other day. Or was it my dentist? Grandma? Mistress? Dog?

Whoever it was, my point is, you can’t take a pee these days without the guy in the urinal next to you talking about the “Titanic.”

I heard one lady say last week (not at a urinal of course), “I don’t want to sound dorky, but it was so good I couldn’t sleep the night I saw it.” (See, Mom, I told you I wouldn’t mention your name.)

But there was one comment I heard a man make that stood out over all of the rest. He said, “I really don’t have a desire to see a movie that I already know the ending to.”

Although one could argue the blatant stupidity in such a statement, I believe there is a point to what the man said.

So maybe there are a lot of other reasons to see “Titanic” aside from the ending — a beautiful love story, phenomenal ship-sinking scenes, Kate Winslet naked — but just imagine how much better the movie would be if you had no clue as to how it would end.

“Titanic” writer/director/producer James Cameron is such a genius, I have to wonder why he didn’t think about this when he began work on the movie.

Other than attracting even more people and making even more money, Cameron would have a huge advantage with an alternative ending in that there could be a “Titanic 2.” He should have learned with “Terminator” that sequels can make twice as much money as originals.

So how could have Cameron altered the ending of “Titanic”?

Here are some of my ideas:

Titanic never hits an iceberg

OK, so this is the obvious alternative ending, but Cameron could be creative with it, such as having the boat get shipwrecked after avoiding the iceberg.

Just as the passengers run out of food and begin to lose hope in ever being rescued, they discover a nearby island where they decide to live for eternity, sleeping in straw huts and drinking out of pineapples.

It would be similar to a mass “Gilligan’s Island” with social class separation, love affairs, false rescues … the whole deal.

Rose and Jack become mermaids

Take it from the scene where Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio) is handcuffed to the pole in the flooding basement of the ship. Instead of Rose (Winslet) coming to his rescue and cutting the handcuffs with an axe, she misses and cuts off his fingers.

Rose feels so bad she decides not to leave Jack, and the young lovers sink along with the ship. But much to their surprise, gills grow behind their ears and they are able to breathe underwater.

Rose and Jack have so much fun with their new features, they decide to stay in the boat and happily paint each other naked the rest of their lives.

Cal and Thomas play battleship

This is one of those psycho, Stanley Kubrick-type of endings, so bare with me.

Rich boy Cal (Billy Zane) and Titanic architect Thomas Andrews spend a little too much time sipping brandy and decide they are going to purposely run the ship into an iceberg.

They decide to make a game out of it and throw all of the lifeboats overboard except for one. Who will get the boat is dependent on a game of Battleship that Cal and Thomas decide to play once the ship is on course to hit the iceberg.

This ending will allow for all sorts of the memorable one-liners Cameron is famous for. Rather than “I’ll be back,” it will be “I just sunk your Titanic.”

Fabrizio saves the day

Remember Jack’s friend who came onto the boat with him but was left completely in the dust when Jack hooked up with Rose. Well — it’s payback time.

Seeing as how he has nothing to do since his only friend dissed him, Fabrizio is chilling on the dock the night the ship is about to hit the iceberg.

But Fabrizio sees the iceberg before the watchmen do and is able to get into the control booth and turn the boat just in time to miss the iceberg.

He then becomes the hero of the ship, and Rose decides to dump her loser artist boyfriend and hook up with him. Rose and Fabrizio (who eventually changes his name to Fabio) live happily ever after, and Jack has no one to paint naked ever again.

So the next time you are standing at a urinal or getting your haircut and someone asks you about “Titanic,” tell them your idea for an alternative ending.

---

Corey Moss is a junior in journalism and mass communication.