Rolla

Grammatically incorrect.

It needs a comma between wide and excited, a comma after yells, a comma after both instances of look, a capital L in look Mom, and the exclamation mark should go inside the closing parenthesis. Moreover, the antecedent of "it" is unclear.

Here's a corrected version:
I can see the eyes of the child get that wide, excited look, and then the child points and yells, "Look, Mom, a skateboarder!"

Its offensiveness or lack thereof is entirely subjective.

Paul Barnard

I could have been clearer. The question was only between the use of "it" in the place of "he."

Rolla

Which I addressed. While "it" is technically grammatically correct, it's cumbersome and confusing, because its antecedent is unclear: what is "it" referring to?

Typically, the noun that most recently precedes a pronoun is its antecedent, but in this case, the closest noun is "look," and looks can't point and yell. So the next most-recent noun is "child," but we don't typically refer to people as "its." So then we go to "eyes," but because that is plural, "it" can't refer to them.

So to avoid this confusion and be immediately understood, grammatically correct, and non-gender-specific, simply restating "the child" is probably the best way to convey the idea:

I can see the eyes of the child get that wide, excited look, and then the child points and yells, "Look, Mom, a skateboarder!"


(My apologies for the multiple edits to this post.)

urbanknight

That makes sense. I went to grade school in the 80’s and 90’s and learned the singular “they” somewhere in there.

Rolla

In the sentence, "No one remembers all the bikes they’ve ridden," the subject is singular but the pronoun is plural, yet it's considered correct by all but the most pedantic.

As Tom Stoppard famously wrote in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, "We are tied down to a language which makes up in obscurity what it lacks in style.”

CrimsonEclipse

Im guessing you've never heard of lawn darts.

Many people were impaled by them, they are infamous in the era of dangerous toys.

Iride01 

So you are more worried about the toy, than a persons desire to impale someone?

Though maybe some were intentionally impaled by lawn darts. Most were accidental. Though that's not an excuse for marketing something to people that is likely to have a large number of accidental injury from using it. Even if they were used wrong.

tomato coupe

We used to shoot arrows straight up in the air when we were kids. Luckily, no one ever got hit by one of them.

livedarklions

TBH, I missed the reference to lawn darts. The problem with them wasn't impalement so much, it was head injuries. I'm guessing you didn't play the game much if you thought impalement was much of a possibility. They aren't very sharp, but the tip end is heavy so the dart penetrates the ground. Basically, they're thrown underhanded, and when they come down, all the weight and force is concentrated in the tip, so it's very effective in breaking skulls.

livedarklions

I think the primary problem was that kids would walk or run into the area where the darts were being tossed, and the darts would land on their heads, heavy tip first. If you've ever played it, it's not obviously dangerous, so you're likely thinking more lawn bowling than firing range, and not seeing how important it is to control the area. Also, people thought it was a relatively safe toy, but it's now illegal to sell it as appropriate for kids.

livedarklions

I plead the Fifth on my childhood bb gun exploits.

Iride01 

I did that too. No one wished for others to be impaled while doing this or lawn darts which I also had when a child.

And with my BB gun I got when six or seven y.o. the first thing I did was similar to Ralphie and almost shot my eye out when it ricocheted off the steel tank I shot at. Shot my sister in the butt with it too. She still won't quit bringing that up every now and then. <grin>

wolfchild

Internet forums can be very cruel too...I get hammered almost daily

CrimsonEclipse

Survival by good instincts and dumb luck.
What a childhood.

Half of the stuff i did as a kid would have me put on a list today.
Sure was fun tho

Lighten up Francis!


You must be fun at parties.

fishyfishy123

Easy fix - that's what the second bottle mount is for!

livedarklions

​​​​​​Sorry your joke wasn't funny.