So "this" happened again.

[M920CAIN]

So, today, me and two other friends agreed to go to a local park to play table tennis, after we were finished, we went to sit on a log in a "kid's zone"-type thing.

We talked for a bit about various things, and up comes this guy, swearing at us, asking us for "credit"(a mugging, obviously) whilst gesturing that he has a weapon behind him.(what complicates matters is that he was black, so he had a go at me, saying I was racist because I was already ready to go as he was approaching, the fact that he was swearing at us and gesturing that he had a weapon, apparently had nothing to do with anything in his head)

Having experienced such situations before, I stood up and got my things, and I was ready to leave and about to tell my friends to leave, but I was also quite scared, (my hands and my legs were shaking and my voice gave that distinction), but the guy who walked up to us had suddenly dropped the gesture and was insulting me directly(since I was way taller than he was, he assumed I was older, so he started calling me a woman, etc.). Then I told him that I was actually 16, and he backed off from me at least.

Then, he tried to grab my friend's table tennis bat and started swearing at him too, and to my other friend, he started touching his face and hair(because he has really long hair).

At that point, we all left, and were on our way back home.

So suffice to say, this has shaken me, for one: I had felt so helpless, and for two: I am angry at him for having the audacity to to do this, and at myself for just standing there, being afraid.

Tell me, fellow Escapists of experiences you had similar to this or things to do to a) prevent these sort of situations and/or b) ways to handle them better.

I come from a pretty poor country with low wages and government corruption, but what I'm going to say doesn't happen all that often. I was once, younger, about 10-12 years ago with a friend strolling around the neighborhood, going to my home to play some old outdated videogames by today's standards. On our way, we took a detour to make the road to my home shorter and there I ended up with someone threatening me with a knife asking for my money. Me & my friend were pretty stupid and smiled about the situation (though having a knife at your back is no laughing matter). I told the guy who was a kid also that I don't have any money and if he wants to check he can do so. The guy with the knife put away the knife and checked my pockets, he got nothing out of them, me and my friend were left alone to go on our way. The thing is, you can't predict what others will do, you can control what you will do, and that's the best weapon you have really. Try as much as you can to get the other guy (the offender) to stop his offending action (knife in my case) by diversion, discussion, etc, of course in the limits you can and with the goal to keep things as calm as possible until you are in a safe zone to get away or anything of that matter. So what I'm saying is, it's not about being brave, about being the strongest, it's about avoiding violence when the offender has only violence to resort to. In short, you did the right thing, sure maybe he hurt your pride a bit, but there's no right solution for those kind of situations, other than avoiding them as much as you can.
Cheers.