A year ago last November in New York, with his two brothers and his wife, Neville went to the sold-out Metropolitan Opera box office for Aida; he changed lines, ended up behind a very tall man who short-changed the teller sixteen dollars, called out to stop him, and was then given two grand tier seats.
Date (happened)
c. November 1963
unresolved
c. November 1963
stated · probable · preferred
c. October 1963
relative · possible
Why
Genuinely underdetermined which Tuesday in October; kept as a wide estimate rather than guessed.
Reasoning
Relative to the 1963-11-19 telling, the brothers' visit (during which the Aida tickets were bought and used) took place 'last month', i.e. October 1963. The performance itself was for 'next Tuesday night' after the ticket-buying incident, but nothing in the text pins which of the month's Tuesdays (Oct 1, 8, 15, 22, or 29) that was, so this is recorded as a wide circa-October estimate rather than a specific day.
No date
relative · possible
Reasoning
Passage 546865 has Neville place the Aida ticket incident with the self-correcting phrase 'Last year or the year before, no, it was' "a year ago last November" -- settling on a November roughly a year before this lecture (nid=1852, preferred delivery 1965-02-12). The idiom 'a year ago last November' is genuinely ambiguous between the most recent November before the lecture (Nov 1964, only about 3 months prior, which sits oddly with 'a year ago') and the November before that (Nov 1963, about 15 months prior, which better fits the 'a year ago' framing). Given that ambiguity, year is left unset; only the month (November) and rough one-year proximity to the 1965-02-12 lecture are asserted.
between 1964 and 1965
estimated · probable
Reasoning
Counting the stated seven-to-eight-year interval back from the independently dated 1972-05-05 lecture places the incident approximately in 1964-1965; Neville elsewhere in the same lecture repeats the interval with similar imprecision.
Told / reported
12 February 1965
estimated · probable
Reasoning
Passage 546865 (in lecture nid 1852) is Neville answering a question by recounting the Aida-tickets/short-change incident with his brothers -- this passage is the telling. The lecture's confirmed, most reliable delivery claim (a direct scraped dateline) dates it 1965-02-12 exact/probable; the processing notes explain that the competing d1 bound rests on secondhand narrative timestamps (a guest's own letter, and this very anecdote's 'a year ago last November'), which the method itself flags as unreliable for dating delivery, so d1 was set aside in favor of d2.
19 November 1963
estimated
Why
d0 and d1 agree; no disagreement to resolve.
Reasoning
Both of the lecture's 2 delivery claims agree exactly: [d0] (catalog #163, certain, preferred=0) and [d1] (node-sourced chrome dateline naming the month in full, certain, preferred=1). No conflict; 1963-11-19 is a Tuesday, one of Neville's normal lecture nights. Using [d1] as the more directly-evidenced of the two agreeing claims.
5 May 1972
estimated
Reasoning
Lecture nid 1951 is independently dated 1972-05-05 by matching catalogue and transcript dateline.
Sources
Source
- The Law 2 ¶40 (So I said to my brother, “We’ll go to lunch, but first we’ll go to the Met, and we’ll go straight to the box office and get seats for the next performance of Aida, which is Tuesday night.”)
- Even the Wicked ¶39 (about seven, eight years ago)