This kid is 11. My guess is he actually was told he couldn’t hang it because it might “offend” somone. Is “offend” a word that comes to an 11-year-old naturally? Maybe he wasn’t doing his assigned classwork, but I’d bet he WAS told he couldn’t hang it because it would “offend”.
Is “offend” a word that comes to an 11-year-old naturally?
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I realize this thread is a couple of days old, but I wanted to answer this. You wonder if this kid is familiar enough with the word “offend” to use it this way on his own. Think about it, he’s in a public school, where they probably put up a “Holiday Tree” in the lobby in December, before the “Winter Break”. I think it’s a good bet that the word “offend” is part of a public school student’s working vocabulary by age eleven.