I was at Costco with my 7 and 4 year old daughters Sunday morning and the store was crowded. An old man who I had made no eye contact or anything with up to this point comes to me through the crowd, taps me on the shoulder and says "how do you get all the good looking girls?" and motions to my daughters. "What's your secret?"

Should I have beat the fuck out of this old man in the middle of Sunday morning Costco? Is that the proper man-dad reaction? I want to give him the benefit of the doubt and think he was likely just trying to tell me I have cute kids and not a pedophile approaching a Dad about his kids, but what the everloving fuck? Did he think that was going to end well? Should I have just done a Truman Burbank laugh and said "thanks, they are really attractive for their age"? Instead, I just stared him in the eye and made sure everyone but my kids heard me say "that was really fucking creepy, stay away from my kids," and walked off. My girls had no idea anything happened.

Would you have used your powerful arms and beat up a 70 year old man while your kids watched and gotten hauled off by the cops? I'm not black so I would have survived and been quietly arrested, but then someone has to watch the kids while I deal with the cops. Also trying to explain to my girls why I beat an old man to death at the grocery store seems like kind of a big task. I don't have any "I stand for the flag" tshirts and no bumper stickers on my car, so I've never randomly posted on social media about killing anyone who looks at my kids the wrong way to cover up my own insecurities and latent homosexuality. So I'm not sure how I was supposed to react.

What would you have done?

You did about the best thing you could in that situation. I mean, that was some inappropriate phrasing but he probably did only mean to tell you your kids are cute. Beating up an old man is never a good look. Save the beatdowns for anyone who tries to put a hand on your girls, not counting any boys they date when they get older. There's nothing ickier than a dad who gets all protective when his daughter starts to date.

I don’t know how I would have responded. I definitely wouldn’t have started anything physical. I likely would have said something along the lines of “what the fuck is wrong with you?”, but who knows where it escalates from there. Then I wind up getting my ass kicked by a 70 y/o and get it posted on YouTube, so yeah you honestly handled it really well. I agree that he probably didn’t mean anything by it.

I can't afford a membership to Costco.

I wasn't serious about whether I should fight the dude or not, just making fun of Super-parents who go out of their way to say how they'd kill anyone who looks crossways at their kids and that everyone is a pedophile.
The guy creeped me out, not just with what he said, but the deliberateness of seeking me out and getting my attention for it. I assumed innocence but the creep-out level was pretty high, hence saying what I said. Hopefully he rethinks his wording the next time he's in Costco.

Though I did order some new shirts:

Any man who wears one of those shirts wants to fuck his own daughter.