It was a lovely spring afternoon. My classmates and I were playing1on the playground when I let out a cry, "Ow! Ow! Something in my shoe is biting me!"
Everyone was shocked by the cry. They took me into a classroom and were about to take off my shoe. "Which foot is it?" one asked. "Let2have a look."
Suddenly, I remembered the holes in my socks. My family was3poor during those years that my parents couldn't buy me good socks. Instead, I wore welfare socks,4cost only a little, but those cheap socks didn't last long. They soon had holes at the bottom.
I refused5off my shoes. I couldn't stand others seeing the holes in my socks. I tried to hold back my tears. Yet, each time the thing in my shoe bit me, tears raced down my face.
My teacher, Miss Diane, hurried into6classroom. "What's wrong?" she asked.
"Something is biting her right foot,7she doesn't allow anyone to take off her shoe," one of my classmates answered.
Miss Diane lived next door to me. She knew everything8my family. She put9hands on my shaking shoulders and looked into my painful and hopeless eyes.
"Oh, yes, it 10be a sock-eating ant," she said, as if she had already seen the thing inside the shoe. "I remember 11I had a bite from one of those ants. By the time I got my shoe off, it had eaten almost the whole bottom of my sock." My classmates nodded while they were listening to the teacher carefully, although they all looked a little12.
Miss Diane took off my right shoe and sock and13them over the dustbin. Two red ants fell into it. "Just what I thought. The ants have eaten part of her sock." When she stroke an alcohol (酒精) cotton ball on the bites, she added, "you are14brave girl to take so many bites."
The alcohol felt cool on the bites and a little girl's pride15by the "sock-eating ant" story.
