ROSE:  What else?
 
MARLA:  I think that that's -- that's part -- well, how do you feel about having been a health aide? 

ROSE:  How do I feel about having been a health aide.  Today is 2005, I'm me, I'm happy.  I'm happy at least I was a health aide. 

See, I grew up in a camp, I know nothing about White man's education.  I somehow or other knew how to read, which was pretty interesting when we're in the camp and we got no books, but we see on the shelf baking powder or salt and we know how to spell baking powder, know how to spell salt.  We know how to spell flour, we know how to spell milk, all the groceries that we see on the shelf, rice or macaronies, that's our books. 
See. 

And -- and this modern days and modern times, kids got way over, lots of materials what they can learn out of.  They are so plumb full of everything that they can learn with compared to us, we were just in a little cabin and we were just reading from what's on the shelf.  No kind of books, I'd say. 

And then as I'm -- as I'm getting older and older, you know, I'm reading other books and I'm doing other stuff, and I'm struggling with ABA class and struggling with whatever I'm going to learn.

MARLA:  What does ABA stand for? 

ROSE:  Adults basic education, maybe. 

MARLA:  Okay. 

ROSE:  Uh-hum.  Well.  And I ask questions and I talk with people, and then I look in dictionary.  See, well, like I'm two ways, I could say, oh, White man didn't teach me all that.  I saw it.  I saw it.  And you know you could just hear me. 

And I can just read like nothing.  I don't know what I'm reading.  I'm pretty smart, you know.  Somebody will think I'm pretty smart because I'm reading.  I don't know what I said.  I didn't -- maybe I don't know what it means.  But yeah, you know, I forgot it now. 

I don't even think about that I was health aide or -- I don't even think about it now.  I'm too busy.  You know, I like to sew and I like to do beadwork and I like to ride around up the road. 

And I always say I'm going to pick berries, but when I find out that I couldn't really bend down, I pick about a cup and I lay down on the ground.  And then I try again.  I get about 10 berries and I lay down again.  And that's how I am now.  I just lay down in the woods. 

Pretty soon I make fire and I make hot tea and, oh, that's beautiful life.  Sitting out in the country on a clean land and you got campfire, you got nice hot tea.  There's no life better than that.  That's so beautiful.  Just to be out in the woods.  I think that's my -- that's my heaven.
 
MARLA:  Yeah.  ROSE:  Just living like that.  And right now, I -- I don't even think about I was health aide.  I don't know.  I don't know, it pass -- it pass already in my head.