I was raised in the rural Midwest and had a very straight-laced upbringing.

You know you are a naive, Midwestern redneck when you read about the dozens of love-making positions in the Hindu sex manual Kama Sutra and you are familiar with only three of them. Four if you count that time you and your beau tried to do it on the tractor and you fell off and had to wear a neck brace for three months. You don’t want to do that again.

I do know when I get cut off by an aggressive driver in traffic, I am supposed to show the offending driver one of my fingers in a vertical salute, but I am so clueless that I am never quite sure which finger. I think it is one of the middle ones.

I once read a movie review in which the reviewer warned moviegoers about a newly released film’s “copious use of the N-word, the S-word, the F-word, the other F-word, and all the language so appalling to polite society.”

We don’t curse at my house. I thought there was only one dirty F-word. I can’t figure out what the other one is. It is driving me nuts.

If you are uncertain of your status as a redneck, check your yard for the following: a pink plastic flamingo, a plywood cutout of a little boy urinating, and a disabled truck propped up on cinder blocks.

Still not sure? Is your vehicle plastered with bumper stickers containing crude references to bodily functions?

My favorite redneck bumper sticker, seen on the back of a rickety pickup truck, read, “it’s not how you pick your nose; it’s what you do with the boogers.” This bumper sticker succeeds on many levels of the redneck-o-meter, in that it mentions a bodily function (nasal congestion) and uses a crude hillbilly term (boogers).

Note that the bumper sticker, while using traditional redneck phraseology, is properly spelled, grammatically correct, and appropriately punctuated. This makes it a rarity among hillbilly bumper stickers. Usually, they just say “no fat chicks.”

I was especially impressed by the correct placement of a semi-colon and the presence of apostrophes in the word “it’s.” Two times, no less!

Be proud, fellow rednecks! Embrace your hillbilly heritage and your Midwestern naivete!

Meanwhile, what the heck is the other dirty F-word?