In 2003, David and Holly Greene were driving their three children to Boone for their annual Fourth of July family outing when they realized something.

"No one was talking," Holly Greene said. "They were all plugged into something."

So they designed a simple game to start their family talking again.

Now, four years later, the Cary couple is taking a big business gamble by trying to turn the game into a commercial success.

Called Gab to Go, it consists of a coffee cup filled with open-ended, conversation-starting questions and the tag line "unplug and connect."

Players take turns asking each other questions such as, "What do you look back on as a 'fashion mistake?' " "Name a song that makes you cringe every time you hear it" and "What do you consider to be the greatest invention of all time?"

About 70 of the 100 questions are OK for kids and adults; the other 30 are more for adults, because they deal with such things as careers and childhood memories.

The Greenes said that playing it with friends and family showed them the power of their simple idea.

"We're not Amish people by any stretch of the imagination," David Greene said. "But everybody feels that need to step back a bit, and the more people we played it with, the more people seemed to really enjoy it."

But for a couple with no retail experience, launching a new product has been difficult.

David Greene is a salesman for the Cary software company SAS. Holly Greene is a former kindergarten teacher who left teaching to pursue her dream of singing.

"When we started, we were making copies at Kinko's and sticking stickers on the boxes," David Greene said. "We watch 'The Big Idea' with Donnie Deutsch' for inspiration."

"The Big Idea" is a business news show on cable network CNBC that focuses on entrepreneurs and their stories of how they struck it big.

And after a year of small-time sales through mailbox fliers and word-of-mouth marketing, the couple has made a big commitment. They've formed a company, Right Brain Factory Inc., gotten patents and put about $15,000 into research, development and the first order of 50,000 copies of the game, which were made in Michigan.

"We decided we needed to take some risk," David Greene said. "I knew I would always regret it if we didn't."

The game is sold for $9.95 in several area stores, including the Regulator Bookshop in Durham, Raleigh's Tookie's Toys and in Cary at AbraKIDabra Toys and Games Galore.

The first outlet to carry it was the Blue Rain Cafe in Apex, where customers not only can purchase Gab to Go, they can also play while they drink their coffee.

"It is so neat to watch the customers pick those cards up and they just start laughing," said owner Bill Rowland. "You find out things you never knew about them."

Rowland said he thinks the game has plenty of appeal.

"We really do sell out a lot," he said. "And when we do sell out, we start getting back orders for them."

If Gab to Go succeeds, the Greenes say they're already making up questions for a second version of the game designed exclusively for young children to play. But for now, they're just keeping their fingers crossed.

"It's almost like putting your child out in front of an audience," Holly Greene said. "Don't say it's ugly."