We have all seen the country wanna be people. The ones who act and dress "country." They think they are really cool and know the works of how a farm or ranch works. They are very stereotypical; they do not accurately portray what country actually is. You can dress in boots and plaid and wear your bling jeans, but that is your stereotypical country person.

Take it from someone raised on a farm, you can wear whatever you want, but you know you're true country when your favorite playground game was trying to hop over the barb wire and electric fences, trying to avoid getting shocked or poked. The bales of hay were a mountain you would conquer.

When you are true country you usually are shooting a bow or a gun before you are in school. Your swimming pool is the pond and you prayed you wouldn't come face to face with a snapping turtle. On hot days you ran down to the crick and you felt the mud squish in between your toes. Your first pet was the calf you had to take in the house to keep from freezing when it was born on a rainy night. You grew up in 4-H showing your animals every year. You also tried to beat your siblings' ribbon records by entering more than they did and bragged when you get the purple ribbon meaning you get to present at the state fair.

When you got older you did not really have a social life because it was all about school and chores: feed the pigs, count the cattle, feed the chickens, and be on time for supper. Your days were long but the nights were even longer when the cattle broke down the fence and you had to help repair it at three in the morning and had to be up at 6 to do your morning chores. You wear your boots and jeans to school because you did not have time to change. You also know you are true country when you got excited to take your tractor to school. FFA was your life when you got into high school and education on farming was so important to you.

There are so many memories that you can only begin to understand when you are born country. You can experience all these things when you are older, but you cannot begin to fathom all the hard work, long nights you experience when you are raised from the beginning in this culture.

Country is more than just a way you dress, act, and a genre of music. It is not all glamorous as you see on television. It is much more hard work, blood and sweat. You can take the person out of the country, but you cannot take the country out of the person.