There are few words that have more definitions than family. I realize this every time we invite a guest over for dinner. To me and my family members, our dinner conversations seem completely normal, but as soon as I see it through someone else’s eyes I realize why we never invited friends over as kids.

Picture this, Easter dinner at the Eastwoods: Mom, dad, sisters Jillian and Maddy, my boyfriend and me were all wrapped around the dining room table, which had recently been cleared of mail and shopping bags.

Everything looked absolutely delicious. The pork roast took longer to cook than my mom expected, so it was bleeding red puddles onto the white plate, but at this point in my life I am very used to eating undercooked meat. My dad’s favorite line, “Who wants their chicken pink?” has made it easier to eat meat in all forms of rawness. For some reason my mom’s amazing mashed potatoes did not fluff like they usually do and they stuck to the bowl and spoon like gloppy paste (though they still tasted good). We marveled at the corn, which seemed to have turned out perfectly. As my mom pointed out, it came from the freezer and went into the microwave.

But dinner at our house has never been much about the food — it’s about the conversation. Dinner was jump-started with a “would you rather” question and quickly transitioned into vivid descriptions of dislocated kneecaps. Apparently, kneecaps can be shoved up and into the fat and muscle of the thigh. Jillian, who was leading this discussion, was absolutely riveted, using her arms and legs to show what it would look like while wearing the same expression small children wear when they pet puppies. Meanwhile, I tried to keep down pork roast and paste.

As the sloshing gravy boat was being passed around, my mom said “We’re gonna need a bigger boat!,” which is a quote from “Jaws.” This led to an incredibly sad and gruesome historical story from World War II in which the USS Indianapolis warship sunk, leaving 900 men waiting for rescue. The survivors fed their dead friends to the sharks to stay alive, Jillian told us.

I can’t remember what prompted it, but we spent the next few minutes discussing David Sedaris and poop stories. Jillian found an especially funny story on her phone about a woman who was on a date at a man’s house but could not get her poop to flush. Her solution was to pick it out of the toilet, wrap it toilet paper and stick it in her purse. “There is a poop in my purse!” Jillian read repeatedly as everyone laughed hysterically.

There was a brief interlude into male genitals — my dad always called penises “dropping-down peepees” when my sisters and I were little kids. “Boys wear blue underwear and girls wear pink” is something my dad still says. Then my sisters and I started throwing around other helpful advice that my dad has given in the past. Probably the most memorable is “It’s OK to drink to fit in.”

Maddy changed the focus from dropping-down peepees to female serial killers by practicing her wink at me from across the table. Jillian then had to prove that she could wink, too. However, instead of a quick sexy eye flicker, Jillian closed a single eyelid so slowly and creepily it reminded me of a glass-eyed baby doll staring with a single unblinking blue-green eye.

From the sheer creep-factor of Jillian’s wink, the conversation spiraled to murderers Lizzie Borden and Countess Elizabeth Báthory de Ecsed, who we Googled on a phone. Lizzie Borden allegedly killed both of her parents with a hatchet and was acquitted. The countess tortured and killed approximately 600 of her female maids and was rumored to drink and bathe in their blood to remain youthful. The topic of serial killers carried us all the way into the kitchen and ended Eastwood dinner table talk.

The next morning, at breakfast, I was talking to my family about the strangeness of our conversation from the night before. My mom’s response was: “I really didn’t think it seemed that different from what we usually talk about.” Case in point.

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