That's it, Ethel--I'm gettin' my gator!

See Monica? You've laid down a challenge...now I have to keep trying to come up with post titles that will make you giggle! How'm I doing so far?

Mr. K and I met December 9, 2003, and moved in together June 12, 2004. We weren't married until summer 2005, so we showed a little restraint...much the way I show restraint in my yarn and scrub collecting. Ahem. Anyway.

Around the time we moved in together, there was a tiny article in the paper about a Florida man who, allegedly, struck his girlfriend with an alligator. True story. (I didn't have to read all of it to know there was a trailor park involved, by the way....but I did and there was. I'm not entirely sure they weren't my neighbors at some point, if it comes to that. It sounds like something some of them would do.) He also threw beer bottles at her...which was my other good guess as to what transpired here. Trailor park, alcohol, 6 foot reptile--it's a trailor trash powder keg, people.

Mr K and I kept the article on our fridge (largely because it made us laugh so hard for about a week, that we would look at one another and start snorting wildly) and there are a few things we've come to wonder. For instance:

• the gentleman in question, likely sporting a mullet (although I have no proof of this), was apparently raising the gator in the bathtub. So....how did this go down? How do you convince an angry woman to wait patiently while you go fish your alligator out of the bathtub to hit her with it?
• Did he swing it by the tail and smack her with the snout? Or swing it by the snout and tail whip her? And, again, how did he get her to stand still for this? I think I'd probably take the hint and step out for a bit if Mr. K was winding up with a giant reptile in the living room.
• How much alcohol does one have to consume before the best problem-solving idea you can come up with involves the application of an alligator directly to the perceived source of the difficulty?
• At some point, he had to put the gator down. And I have to believe that this gator was probably not in a terrific mood, having been swung around by a drunk in a tiny living room panelled in fake oak, and then laid upside someone's head. How did this guy not end up as a pile of badly dressed Tender Vittles for Gators? Or was the alligator smarter than both of them combined (not a stretch, I'm gathering) and got himself out of there before things really started to go downhill?
• And speaking of going downhill, how in the world would these people have escalated this particular argument? I mean, where do you go from "That's it--I'm gettin' my gator"? Did she have a porcupine on a string tucked away somewhere for just such an emergency?
• What did the 911 call for this little incident sound like? "Yeah, the neighbors are kinda havin' a fight of some kind.....what? Yeah, I think it's serious. Well, there's some gator swingin' goin' on."
• What was this genius planning to do with a full-grown gator? And was he ever planning to be able to use his bathtub again? And was the fact that neither of them had been able to bathe in several months without getting body parts savaged (I can only hope he wore a protective cup in the shower) part of the reason for the touchy tempers? The mind boggles.
• Can you imagine these two in a marriage counselors office? "and how did that make you feel?" "It made me feel like hittin' her upside the head with an alligator. So I did."
• For that matter, what would a marriage guide for these people look like?

1. No matter how angry you are, never throw beer bottles at your spouse--unless they are empty.
2. Use the gator only as a last resort, when telling her constructively that she's a miserable bitch and always was one has somehow failed to make her see reason.
3. If you must use the gator, it is polite to hit her with the tail end, thus keeping the teeth--the dangerous end--pointed away from her.
4. Set down your beer before swinging the gator. It shows respect for her when you try not to spill things on the carpet that she'll have to clean up later.
5. Be sure to see if she's all right after you check on the alligator.
6. No matter how mad she makes you, don't feed her cat to the alligator.
7. Once in awhile, make the effort to be the one to clean the gator crap out of the bathtub. It shows you care.
8. When swinging the gator, make sure you have enough clearance to avoid hitting the TV. She may not think she cares about TV, but you'll be a lot nicer if you don't have to miss NASCAR just because she wouldn't listen.

And so on. Mr. K and I can still break each other up by threatening to "get the gator". Thankfully, we have two showers.