I might be an elitist prick...?

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(Sorry mods if the thread title is not allowed in this forum.)

So last night at the skating rink, someone threw a drink at my car, made the windows all sticky and stuff. It's not a huge deal, it'll just wash off, but that it's a sign of disrespect bothers me.

The scenario is this, it was Friday night public session, and I decided to go skating. A lot of times I don't make the weekend/Friday night sessions, as simply they're more crowded with, well, people from the general public. As in, not serious skaters. During the week days there's more serious skaters there, as the time is somewhat inconvenient. It's still not a freestyle session, as in, for figure skaters only, but many days it more or less amounts to a discounted freestyle session. That and on weekdays for better or worse, it's the same "crowd" and it's mostly older people (many 60+) who get along quite well with me, and seem to like me.

This session last night, though, basically a group of like 20 kids that all knew each other from I think even the same high school, decided to show up. I didn't know any of them, and didn't make much effort to converse with them. They didn't really try talking to me. Now, I actually am quite outgoing, but now I'm learning to turn that down, not actually out of social anxiety, but simply because I've been told too many times I annoy people by rambling on about what is termed on here "special interests." So, didn't talk to any of them.

So, I skated sorta how I normally do, except that session, I was feeling terrible from the events that happened that day (I spilled like 1/3 of a gallon of paint in my mom's car's trunk.) So, because I felt terrible, I figured fast food and an energy drink would cheer me up. It did a bit. Terribly unhealthy coping strategy, but one nonetheless. So then I went skating. I decided to skate hard that session, for some reason. There was another figure skating girl who works there, and she was skating, too, and I'm guessing partially because she's an attractive girl, but also probably moreso, if someone on the ice is better than you, you're getting "egged on" so to speak, not in a bad way, but yeah. I've noticed when the freestyle sessions overlap into the public sessions, I skate way better for those 10 minutes, as the people around you are skating awesome so you're trying like hell. That and I was feeling bad before, and I guess my emotional...whatever, made me skate really hard to just sorta kill the troubles, so to speak. The other thing, too, is I had my jpop going. Usually, I'm in charge of the music in public sessions, so while I play sorta unique stuff, I can't play whatever I want, but today it was headphones, so whatever I felt like hearing. So I got to hear jpop like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Urtfvsnkd80 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hW5ddXFFPt8 and songs like that for whatever reason, it's like a perfect emotional connection or something.

Anyway, yeah, basically, I might have pissed people off by three things. Not trying to join the group/being an outsider, and then my skating skills, and people interpreting me as a showoff, and then also, my quietness combined with those things, maybe made people think I was haughty? So yeah, because of that, drink thrown at car.

I don't know. It's not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, maybe it's just a simple matter of "haters gonna hate." This seems to happen with a lot of my hobbies/things I pick. I tend to separate myself and do what I perceive to be the most "elite" thing. I want to do the most technically proficient kinda stuff, and normal people don't wanna. So that's why I'm coming to the conclusion that maybe I'm an elitist. As far as if I view myself as an elitist, I got no idea, but it seems other people may view me as such. It just seems, the things I do for hobbies and whatnot, separate me. It seems I do things simply to do things, and other people do things to make connections with people. The high school kids skating, weren't really skating for the sake of skating, but they were doing it to "hang out" and "chill." This seems to happen with many of my hobbies, I start things that are sorta "normal" and then I go to what I see as the logical conclusion, and pick the variant of that hobby that more or less seems most technical and impressive to me, and yeah, I end up being alienated to "normal people" partially out of just lack of commonality, and partially out of I'm guessing jealousy. It's hard, too, as I don't see myself as someone, you know, worth being jealous over, you know? People tell me I'm smart or whatever, and I just don't see it. People see all the things I can do and go "wow" but then they also go "wow" over all the things I can't do, too.

I guess this leads to the end of the post. Basically it can be summed up in these quotes by CS Lewis from "Screwtape Proposes a Toast."

Whatever you do, you will always get haters.

The fact they threw stuff at your car says more about them than about you.

Arrogant people are everywhere sadly enough, so you can't avoid them.

It has to do with the herd mentality. Those who are not part of the herd tend to be falsely perceived as being stuck up. After all, if you are doing stuff without needing to be part of the herd, then you are "disrespecting the herd", and they will often retaliate against those who they falsely believe have "dissed" them. Of course, once they do bad stuff against the non herd person, then that person has a reason to not respect them, and to not be part of their herd. DUH!

I don't think much of herd humans. I've seen too much bad stuff done by them, and read about more of it, and seen it on TV news programs. Also, if you need to be part of a herd to be someone, then that's kind of pathetic.

Don't go out of your way to antagonize them, but do keep being you. No one else gets a vote on how you live your life, as long as you are not breaking any laws.

At least you're brave enough to go out, and no, I don't think you're elitist. An elitist skater wouldn't skate in a public place anyway. They'd have their own private members-only club somewhere with other elitists.