How to organize a fun game

Lea dreams of organizing a fun game for her friends. The only problem is that she, well, is not a very fun person. When she makes a joke, nobody ever laughs. Everybody makes a strange face or smiles in an awkward way (= uncomfortable). She is very jealous of people who are just effortlessly funny. That is exactly the problem with Lea: she tries too hard when she tries to make people laugh, and it doesn’t feel natural to her, or to them.

For example, once she tried to play Pictionary with her friends. She had prepared the definitions in advance, but they all turned out to be (= they were surprising and unexpected) too easy. When had her friends all learned to draw that well? Each of them just scribbled a few lines, and all the rest of the participants guessed the objects instantly! As usual, everyone started to yawn (=to open their mouths in a sleepy way). Lea was so upset (=unhappy) that she wrote some new definitions in a hurry while nobody was watching. To her horror, she soon realized that the new concepts were much too difficult, like “existence” or “experience”, or “response”. Her friends got upset as well. To avoid all this embrassment, she just went out and ran away. The problem was that the game was taking place at her own apartment! Her friends told her on her cell and asked her to come back, which she found kind of flattering.

The next day, Lea tried to analyze what had gone wrong. Maybe she had been too bossy by giving everyone orders on how to play and how to guess the words? But without orders, people only do what they want, and it becomes unmanageable. Whatever Lea tries, she finds herself backed into a corner.