I don't think that flagamuffin wanted to patronize you or accuse you of anything (although hey, I'm not flagamuffin, so what do I know). What I find curious, however, is why you seem to feel the need to defend yourself in this particular case.

I'm smart and can live on a budget, not a pirate.

You say that you aren't a pirate while also admitting to pirating music. Listening to a song on the radio once does not entitle one to downloading the entire album... even if that album is crap. Piracy is piracy. I do not oppose it, hell, I, being a poor college student, pirate stuff myself all the time. But why do you feel this intense need to prove that, just in your case, "piracy" actually means "living on a tight budget"? Let's call everything by their actual names. Piracy is piracy, even if you make an exception with textbooks.

I'm not some complete prude when it comes to piracy but textbooks/education are a big 'no' in my mind.

Why are you, while being pretty lax about everything else, so opposed to textbook piracy to begin with? It's not like pirating a book in an .epub or a .pdf format stops you from getting the paper version - in fact, I find that it's great to have both. Why is it a big no if your only motivation for buying textbooks seems to be the fact that you can resell them, not some moral qualms about piracy in general? Again, not trying to patronize or accuse you of something, just genuinely curious.