England will never live it down?

Reader question:

Please explain “live it down” in this passage, a match report on England’s loss to Iceland in Euro 2016 soccer championship (England humiliated as Iceland knock them out of Euro 2016, TheGuardian.com, June 27, 2016):

By that stage Hodgson had brought on Jamie Vardy in place of Sterling. Jack Wilshere had already come on at half-time, replacing Eric Dier, and Marcus Rashford was introduced in the 85th minute. What a statistic it is that Rashford completed more dribbles – three – in that time than any other England player throughout the match. Hodgson had taken off Rooney when it surely made better sense to remove a defender. None of it worked and England will never live it down.

My comments:

“It” refers to England’s 2-1 loss to Iceland plus all the humiliation, shock and embarrassment that came with it.

“England will never LIVE IT DOWN” literally means the English team will never LIVE to see IT quite DOWN.

In other words, this defeat will live in infamy – like Pearl Harbor – forever on.

Time heals and we think perhaps over time, the backlash from fans will die down, like the noise of traffic on the street here will eventually die down – sometimes after midnight – but in this case, the humiliation and embarrassment will perhaps live on forever.

If not forever, then something close to that long.

And perhaps not quite like Pearl Harbor, either, but you get the point, such is the magnitude of England’s loss to Iceland, of all countries, with a population of 300,000. In comparison, the city of Beijing has a population of 20 million.

Well, since I’ve mentioned Beijing, the magnitude of England’s loss in soccer to Iceland can perhaps match a proverbial loss by a Chinese player to an Icelander in ping pong.

See, that’s how great the loss was to England.

Or how great a victory it was to Iceland, because we’ve got to tip our collective hat to all Icelanders for this remarkable victory.

But, the loss feels much greater in magnitude and effect. Frankly speaking, I, yours truly, is still living in shock more than one week after the fact.

I, a fan of English football for long, am still unable to fully reconcile with the fact that it actually happened. Final score, England 1, Iceland 2.

I missed watching the match because it was scheduled at 3am here and, looking back, I don’t even know if it was a good thing or bad that I missed it.

You see, on the one hand, I missed an opportunity to witness victory, I mean history but on the other hand I think I would have been really devastated to see England lose in that way first hand, I mean, kick by kick, play by play.

Suffice it to say, I am still in shock and have yet to recover. I stagger even to think about it.

Now imagine how the situation is for England players and their die-hard supporters, who by the way have compared this defeat to their 1950 loss to America as the greatest upset in all soccer history, and quite correctly too.

I may add that in the American case, in which the Americans won 1-0, some copy editors back in England automatically changed the score line to 10-0 in England’s favor, believing some scribe had simply made a typing mistake.

Imagine how stunned copy editors and everyone else back home in England would have been if they understood that it was no mistake, that England really lost a soccer match to the Yankees, of all people.

It’s been more than six decades after the event but the 1950 loss is still much alive and well in soccer folk lore. And I can hear people talking about the Icelandic victory 60 years from now, talking abut it as though it happened yesterday.

This is why they say “England will never live it down”.

They will try to live with it, I suppose, i.e. try to cope and bear with it the best they can but they’ll never be able to live it fully down.

In other words, people will never forget it. And the players will never cease to feel embarrassed by it.

All right, here are other examples of people living something down, usually something shameful or embarrassing and most usually failing to do so:

1. Keke Palmer, who is best known for her work in Akeelah and the Bee, Joyful Noise and the critically acclaimed TV movie Abducted: The Carlina White Story, is now back in a big way on the small screen. She stars as Rozonda “Chilli” Thomas in the VH1 television movie, Crazy Sexy Cool: The TLC Story, which airs October 21. From preparing for that role to her friendship with Bobbi Kristina Brown to navigating Hollywood, Palmer spoke candidly to BET.com about her journey in show business.

You bear a strong resemblance to Chilli, but you almost didn’t get the role in the TLC TV movie. Can you tell us about that?

Initially they had the idea to hire complete unknowns to star in the movie. I was a little sad about it, but I let it go because I thought it would be cool for other people to get a chance. But as a kid, people always used to tell me, “You look like Chilli from TLC.” So it wasn’t a surprise for me that the filmmakers thought of me as her. And then when they called me back a few months later and asked, “Would you play the role of Chilli?” Of course, I was down.

Did you speak with the real Chilli about portraying her in the movie?

Chilli and Tionne [“T-Boz” Watkins] were both very involved in the process of making this movie, even down to the choreography. They would both help teach us their dance steps. Chilli was very open about things in her life that weren’t in the script and it helped things make more sense for me. I really appreciated it. To hear what she went through in her own words made it easier for me to play her emotionally.

Tell us about your friendship with Bobbi Kristina Brown. When did you guys first meet?

We first came into contact on MySpace, randomly enough, when I was about 13 or 14 and we just became friends. She’s a very nice girl and we would talk back and forth. Then, I hadn’t had a chance talk to her when her mother passed. But later I saw her at the Think Like a Man premiere. I was really glad to see her and she was doing pretty good. We had a chance to talk. But we go in and out of losing touch.

How is she and what do you think is most misunderstood about her?

I think she’s doing okay. Any of the young people who seem like they are having bad press you have to take into account that they are living their lives out in public. Imagine if half of the things you did that you’re not proud of were blasted over the Internet? Then, suppose you could never live it down? And do you know how it must feel to be berated constantly because of it? The industry is hard. But you can’t really get a feel for it unless you are in it.

- Keke Palmer: “I Never Got Caught Up in Fame and Money”, Bet.com, September 11, 2013.

2. A WOMAN who was fired for urinating in a box at work has had her job reinstated but she is suing the company.

Lily Prince was working on an Electrolux assembly line, making steel liners for freezers, in St Cloud, Minnesota, when the incident occurred, the Star Tribune reports.

Ms Prince, 51, says she begged her supervisor to allow her to go to the bathroom but he denied permission. She says she asked several more times over the following 30 or 40 minutes.

Eventually, she says, she lined a cardboard box with a plastic bag and urinated into the box.

“I knew I couldn’t hold it any longer,” she said. “I would have wet my pants and I would never live it down.”

The next day she was fired by Electrolux Home Products for a “health and safety violation”. She out of work for 11 months before the August 2017 dismissal was reversed by an arbitrator, who said it violated the union contract and ordered her reinstated.

Ms Prince then stepped things up.

In a suit filed by Ms Prince last year over her firing, US District Judge Donovan Frank denied a motion by Electrolux to dismiss the case, saying Ms Prince’s allegations “are sufficient to allege that she was discharged or discriminated against because she exercised her rights.”

- Fired for urinating in a box, factory worker gets job back but sues company, News.com.au, March 2, 2017.

3. In the middle of the cool, drizzly afternoon of Sunday, May 25, 1947, as the Brooklyn Dodgers led the Philadelphia Phillies 4-3 in the eighth inning, Jackie Robinson ground his spikes into the rain-softened dirt of the batter’s box at Ebbets Field, turned to face Phillies reliever Tommy Hughes and waited for Hughes’s 3-and-1 cripple.

Forty days had passed since Robinson donned a Dodgers uniform and became the first black man in this century to play in the majors, going 0 for 3 in his debut at Ebbets on April 15. In recent games the 28-year-old rookie had begun to evince signs of settling down and playing the crisp, commanding brand of ball that Branch Rickey, the Dodgers' president, had predicted of him. “You haven’t seen the real Robinson yet,” Rickey had been telling writers all spring. “Just wait.”

Through his first 30 big league games, played in six National League cities, the rookie had alternately struggled and soared, at times performing brilliantly at first base (a position new to him that year) but often pressing at the plate. Of course, Robinson had also been the target of racial epithets and flying cleats, of hate letters and death threats, of pitchers throwing at his head and legs, and catchers spitting on his shoes. In the midst of all this bristling animus, there was a circuslike quality to Dodgers games, with Robinson on display like a freak; with large crowds, including many blacks, lustily cheering even his dinkiest pop-ups; and with the daily papers singling him out as the “black meteor,” the “sepia speedster,” the “stellar Negro,” the “muscular Negro,” the “lithe Negro” and “dusky Robbie.”

“More eyes were on Jackie than on any rookie who ever played,” recalls Rex Barney, a Brooklyn reliever that year. It was a wonder, as he endured the mounting pressure of his first weeks in the bigs, that Robinson could perform at all. Yet perform he did, putting together a 14-game hitting streak in the first 2 1/2 weeks of May. By May 25, with the first extended road trip behind him and the novelty of his presence on the wane, Robinson was sensing what he later called a “new confidence” in his game. As he took the field that day against the Phillies--who, led by their Southern-born manager, Ben Chapman, had lacerated him with taunts of “nigger” and “black boy” from the dugout during their first series in April--Robinson had begun to feel, as he would put it, “some of the old power returning.”

...

But Robinson also suffered racial insults in Cincinnati, and they took all forms, even musical. At the end of that May 13 game, as the crowds clambered for the exits and the players walked down the leftfield line toward the tunnel leading to their clubhouses, the Crosley organist started playing Bye Bye, Blackbird. Gabe Paul, then the Reds’ traveling secretary, says he nearly keeled over when he heard the music. “I was shocked,” he says. “Somebody must have put [the organist] up to it.”

According to John Murdough, then the Reds’ ticket manager, Paul flew into a rage, yelling, “Get rid of that guy! Get him out of here. This is a disgrace. We’ll never live it down!”

- The Breakthrough: Why May 1947 was crucial for Jackie Robinson, SI.com, April 15, 2017.

About the author:

Zhang Xin is Trainer at chinadaily.com.cn. He has been with China Daily since 1988, when he graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Write him at: zhangxin@chinadaily.com.cn, or raise a question for potential use in a future column.