Typical ruling question... (longish)

[Brocktoon]

Today I played a live tournament, something I rarely do, and got called for a string-bet. Here's what happened:

We're at the final table and I'm pretty (very) drunk and the chips are confusing the hell out of me since the blinds are big and the BB is something like 16 chips and I'm not used to it at all.

So it gets folded to me in MP and I have 56s and I want to make a play at the blinds. I start cutting out chips directly in front of my stack which is pressed up against the edge of the table. I'm cutting the chips literally within 1 or 2 inches of my chips and it happens to be directly to the SIDE of my hole cards. Its clear to everyone that I'm about to raise but a player to my right (who had already folded) pipes up that I have to just flat call since I'm "string-betting".

This really struck me as bogus but I didn't fight it too much since even though I was ridiculously hammered I liked the "drunk and clueless" image. How can I be string betting when I'm COUNTING chips sideways within 3 inches of the table edge? If there were a bet line on the table I probably wouldn't have been halfway up to it and IMO I made no forward motion. I was cutting them in groups of 4 from right to left.

FWIW, a guy in the blinds had KK and went all in and ended up saving me a LOT of chips and maybe even my stack since if I had raised I would have been getting really attractive pot odds after his all in rather than being able to fold.

Sorry for the long post.