We Need to Talk About Death and Applebee's

I thought about death in Applebee's. Where the Maroon 5 flows as freely as the margarita mix. Where burgers are cooked "pink or no pink." Where the waffle fries aren't the only thing getting loaded.

Yes, Applebee's, the nation's gaudy corporate house of camaraderie and savings. Inelegant, loud, the butt of many jokes. Few like to admit they go to Applebee's, but people go to Applebee's. You may have heard that the Applebee's $200 Date Night Pass, which includes a $30 credit to be used 52 times a year, sold out in one minute.

That is $1,560 worth of sticky meat nibs and gluey white dips inside a dingy room that judges no man for his pain. I've been lured into countless Applebee's by cocktails so cheap they practically pay you, by a glowing red apple that whispers, "Fried green beans are health food. Face your mortality." Just this week I found myself wedged in a clammy booth staring down Valentine's Day decor and intrusive thoughts.

My day had started innocently. I was catching up on news like I do every Monday morning. "Sitting all day at work boosts risk of early death by 16%," I read in the Washington Post. I processed this while oozing around the surfaces of my home like a flabby tabby, which made me think of my cat, recently dead. Every article I opened thereafter seemed to be 1) about how others died or 2) how and why I was next.

I hoisted myself up for a long walk, a great bodily privilege that would surely turn the day around. An hour wandering beneath tree canopies with a morose spirit brought on darker clouds than before. Cloaked in February's gray shadows, every plaque and seawall in the park took on a sinister quality.

"I'm writing about death," I messaged my editor.

"What type of death?" she replied like a cool parent who does not freak when their moody teen smells of funny cigarettes.

I answered noncommittally, and then turned back to the cursed draft. What emerged combined the perils of a sedentary lifestyle with the following: microplastics in breast milk, obituaries, global warming, Category 6 hurricanes, colonization, massacres and centuries of human oppression. My brows crept to the center of my head. I turned back to my editor and announced I had written myself into a crevice of doom.

She read my copy. Maybe I should take a hot shower, she offered. Or go to Applebee's.

Applebee's has become a running gag among our team of writers. We had our work holiday party at Applebee's, capping the year with cheeseburger quesadillas and Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson's The People's Margarita.

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