Getting wet

This past weekend I went to a party and got a drink poured on my head.  This is a new thing for me, and I was kind of torn about how to react to it.  On one hand I have seen plenty of drinks tossed on people in movies and sports shows and such so I kind of wondered what it would be like, but on the other hand I didn't really want a drink tossed on me.

It came at the end of the night when I was saying my goodbyes and on my way out the door.  Just before exiting I ended up in a conversation with two people, and myself and the other guy in the conversation were talking about how our pants don't fit because we have been exercising and our legs and butts got bigger.  The woman in the conversation was angry at us about this because, according to her, we don't know anything about clothes not fitting.  She threw food at me to emphasize her point.

This was strange, but potato chips don't do much damage so I didn't fuss about it.

The conversation shifted to language and she and I found another point of disagreement.  I don't think there is any proper form to language and it should be described and evaluated based on efficacy of communication, not adherence to a particular ruleset.  For example, I would be perfectly happy with someone using u instead of you because it makes a hell of a lot more sense and everyone knows what it means.  She found this to be anathema.

Then she threw a wine cork at me and it bounced off of my head.

Again, I felt like I didn't take much damage so I shouldn't worry overly about it but it did seem rude to do such a thing.

I decided that it was time to go.  She elected to stand over the sole exit and lean over the railing with her drink and informed me that she was going to pour it over my head if I left.  There was no other way to get out of the place and I thought it unlikely that she would go through with this threat - it does seem particularly unfriendly to tell a person they may not leave under threat of being soaked.

I walked down the stairs to go home and halfway down her entire drink came splattering down onto me.  Of course it also got all over the stairs and made a huge mess.  I stood there for a moment, kind of shocked, then noticed that the host had wandered over with some paper towels.  I think he had brought them for a laugh because of the threat of the drink pouring and hadn't actually expected it to occur.

Nonetheless I cleaned myself up and he cleaned up the stairs and the person who poured the drink just watched.  Then I left.

I wasn't at all sure what I should feel about this.  The drink didn't do any damage to me so I can't find any reason to be upset.  And yet I think it was a thing she should not have done.  There would be people out there who would be really upset by this sort of thing, particularly since it was accompanied by the threat.

I am a big dude.  A woman threatening me in this way does not actually put me out and I don't feel any intimidation or worry.  Lots of other people might though, which makes me evaluating this action a tricky thing.  Do I evaluate it in the context of what it did to me?  In that case it was rude but not particularly a problem.  Or should I look at it as a person doing this to another random person at a party?  In that case it is more troubling.

I know that other people don't have the same experiences and privilege I do so I often spend time looking at events like this and wondering how I would feel about them if I were different, and thus how they should be treated.  I rarely can figure out if people who do things to me that I shrug off but which would upset some others do it because they correctly read me as not being susceptible to that sort of thing, or if they just do shit to whoever they want.  Would she have done this to a woman?  Or just any person smaller than her?  Or was it something she felt was fine because I am obviously not physically intimidated by her?  I wish I knew.