I assume you believe God sends men to hell. Do you think He's unjust? Cruel?
do you tell yourself: they deserved it, I'm special?
No, you're defining the Romanist and the Arminian who presume their good works have gotten them into heaven, and that somehow they are more pious, more intelligent than the guy next door who doesn't believe.
Perhaps God didn't have to nudge them like He did Paul. They must have been paying closer attention than Paul. Like you said you were.
The Calvinist realizes that ALL MEN are equally fallen. Equally deserving of condemnation.
Why He chooses some to save and some to leave in their sins is not ours to know. But that ignorance does not negate the fact that this is what the Bible tells us occurs.
Read your Bible.
"For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth" -- Romans 9:11
No wonder RC apologists hate Paul so ferociously these days. Paul contradicts their errors time and again.
Since they are equally deserving, my goodness they haven't even been born yet, we know it has nothing to do with justice, nothing to do with anything they did or wanted or thought - they're condemned to hell before any of this is possible.
God is neither cruel nor unjust.
You just described why he is in Calvinism.