[3] The story sees an eight-year-old schoolboy (Oran Creagh) named Ardal Travis fall in love with his teacher, Miss Purdy (Olga Wehrly).
Eight-year-old Ardal Travis has a crush on his second grade class teacher, Ms. Purdy, and demonstrates his love by giving her a toy ring.
Pierce appears to be a jerk; he refuses to take Ms. Purdy for lunch to celebrate the hour-old engagement, insisting instead on going home to watch the football.
Pierce, by now genuinely concerned for his own safety, becomes irate and is finally reduced to a crying mess, ultimately confessing that he never loved Ms. Purdy but only proposed to her to “shut her up".
Ardal shoots the gun, the scene blacks out momentarily, and then returns with Pierce having fallen to the ground, but with eyes open.
At the beginning of the movie Ms. Purdy had asked her students to look up the three words 'reveal', 'pretend' and 'love'; concepts which, we now see, may be thought to encapsulate the entire film.