The quiet before the game

Everyone was settled on the couches, drinks in hand, but the conversation had hit one of those lulls. You know the kind. Someone had just asked what we should do, and the question just hung there for a second too long. I’d already set up the tablet with the wheel on the coffee table, just in case.

That first spin

I tapped the screen, and the wheel started spinning with a soft, digital whir. All eyes were on it, which was a relief—it gave us something to look at besides each other. When it landed, there was this collective, quiet ‘oh’ that wasn’t excitement or dread, just recognition.The first person to go was my cousin, who’s usually pretty quiet. He leaned forward, squinting at the screen to read it again. ‘Okay,’ he said, drawing the word out. ‘Two truths and a lie. Let’s see.’ He took a long sip of his drink, clearly buying time to think.

When the stories start

His first truth was about accidentally locking himself out on a balcony in Barcelona. The lie was something about a pet iguana. We all started guessing, talking over each other a little, trying to catch him in a detail. The energy in the room shifted completely. It wasn’t about the game being fun yet; it was about the game just… being.My aunt went next, and her story involved a mistaken identity at a grocery store. We were laughing before she even got to the punchline, just at the way she set it up. The earlier quiet felt like a different room, a different group of people.

The wheel’s real job

It didn’t matter what it picked. Charades, Never Have I Ever, a simple dice game. The wheel’s only job was to make the first decision, to be the thing we could all blame or thank for whatever happened next. It took the pressure off of anyone to be the entertainer.

A shared focus

For that hour, the center of the room was that spinning circle on the tablet. Our jokes, our guesses, our fake outrage—it all orbited around whatever silly challenge it gave us. It gave the conversation a shape it didn’t have before.