Meat Shield

This blog site is better than this piece of meat.

It is inevitable when you travel to coin your own phrases as you travel with a group of people during your trip. It becomes an inside joke of sorts, and it’s never as funny when you explain it to others who were not there, but those that went, ‘get it’. Sometimes the phrases aren’t even funny, but alas it does bring back memories. One such phrase I coined during my time in Asia this past year was the term ‘meat shield’. I coined this term as I was crossing the busy streets of Hong Kong with a friend. You see, if you are not careful in Asia, you can easily get run over by moving vehicles when crossing the street illegally. They just don’t care. It’s a risk we all take when doing illegal crossings as a pedestrian. In North America, drivers actually slow down at turns, and there are less blind spots when turning than in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

So what is a meat shield you ask? Let’s say you are crossing the street, and there are cars that turn right onto the intersection you are crossing, (the car will hence come veering at full speed to your left side), you must make sure that there are a fair amount of people on your left hand side when you cross the street illegally. The people on your left will of course soften the blow if indeed a car turns a right at blazing speed. These aforementioned people on your left will thereby act as your ‘meat shield’ because they are made of flesh and they will soften the blow of a car hitting you, if indeed the crash does reach you. The most likely scenario is the car will slow down because he/she will have hit so many pedestratians before he/she reaches you, the driver would’ve slowed down by the time the car is near you. So the more ‘meat shield’ buffer zone between you and the car the better.

This concept also works when you are making a right turn in North America, and a car is turning left to the street you are turning out of, thereby shielding you from oncoming traffic as you make your right turn. This however, is simply known as a ’shield’ because the car isn’t made of meat.

The end.