So soundly, in fact, that I didn’t even notice when the snow began to fall. Didn’t notice as it started to pile higher and higher on my roof, completely covering and then burying the skylight, through which the morning sunshine usually shines on my bed, waking me in time to prepare for the day and help get the kids up and ready for school.

Without my solar alarm, though, it was the kids who wound up waking us, and they were jubilant. They bounced from bed to bed, telling us the good news. School had been called off for the day! The boys were going sledding; the girls were going to build snowmen with their friends. It was still snowing, wasn’t this great? Maybe there’d be no school tomorrow too.

“And don’t worry, Dad. You just rest in bed. We’ll shovel out the house for you. No point going to work. Nobody’ll be there anyway; the roads are all blocked!”

Turned out if someone up there liked us, He had a funny way of showing it. There wasn’t just no school the next day, there was no school for a week! This wasn’t just a snowstorm; it was a blizzard, the highest snowfall in the history of New York City. Obviously, the commitment committee wasn’t going to meet today. I’d have to stay on pins and needles till the next scheduled meeting, next week.

I have an expression I always use that people sometimes have a strange reaction to. They ask me how I’m doing and I say, “Well, I could be worse.” At that moment I thought the worst thing in the world was that the commitment committee meeting was being put off.

But if you use your imagination, you can always imagine how things could indeed be worse.

What would happen, for instance, if all the little guys on the committee, the ones we never talked to, the real conservative ones who lived in apartments in the city, showed up? What if this patchwork committee, none of whom knew the first thing about IDT or the enthusiasm of Dean’s snowbound management, met and decided to give us the thumbs-down? What if they couldn’t take the risk? What if these were the kind of guys who’d never risk their careers committing to an IPO that no one at the firm had ever heard of two weeks ago? What if these guys wanted to impress the firm by showing up no matter what the weather? What if they actually came in by subway, in the middle of the worst blizzard in New York history, and turned down our offering while their superiors—bankers, analysts, heads of research and investment banking—sat home, snowbound in their spacious homes in Westchester, Connecticut, and Long Island, unable to even communicate by phone due to downed utility lines? Now, that would be a lot worse. In fact, it would probably really embarrass all the top guys at Dean who had told me not to worry.

To their credit, our backers at Dean were embarrassed. They all called personally to apologize. Not that they could change anything. The committee was the committee, even if only a few stragglers had been there to vote. My worst “what if” nightmare had come true. The rules were the rules, though. And the rule was that the committee’s decision was final. Better luck next time.

You know how sometimes it’s obvious you’re just doomed? How thing after thing goes wrong until you’re just wiped out? How like Icarus, the feathers are just meant to melt away? Well, this is how I felt when I called Lisa at Cowen to tell her what happened at Dean.

“Oh,” she said, offering no reassurance. “I’ll have to tell Joe.” Yeah, I figured that.