Today as we were walking home from being out with Charlie and Olive, I heard this teenager say to his friends: "Watch this, watch this." He walked towards us and started to block our path.

"Can I ask, do you know if you are hipsters?" he asked while trying to keep a straight face. "Is your child named "dot"?"

He started to laugh and laugh, as if his joke was incredibly funny (if it was, I didn't get the joke). I didn't want any trouble though, since we had the kids with us and there were maybe 6-8 of his friends with him. So I just said, "Your joke is dumb. You're not funny." and we hurried past him.

Then he started smack talking and since he had no real wit or wordplay, he quickly segued into saying we were Chinese, etc. etc. We crossed the street to get away from his friends, and they guffawed and talked amongst themselves... calling out occasional racial insults as they walked on their side of the street.

If I had been by myself, I would have had more trouble controlling myself. But to what end? I'm a grown man... am I going to get in a fight with a teenager? Even if I just verbally beat him down (he wasn't very good at smack talk), he could easily have pulled a weapon. Plus there were so many of his friends around... I always figure when there's a group of teenagers around, the larger the group... the more chance at least one of them has a weapon.

It was not easy to just cross that street though.

Would would you or your SO do in a situation like this?