A future corporate scandal and ensuing trial was prevented tonight.  It all began when Ken Lay threw a fit in my bathtub.

“I want it!” he screamed, reaching for the red plastic ball held in the tiny hands of, and being gummed by the tiny mouth of, my one-year old daughter.  She peered over it confused as if thinking the words as they came from my mouth for the thousandth time, “Gresham, you have ALL the balls except THIS one.  Can Penelope have just ONE ball to play with?”

And then the life lesson Enron’s Mr.Lay and many others either never heard, never understood, or chose to ignore followed.

“When you have everything, Gresham, that makes you happy doesn’t it?”

He looked up at me with a squinty-eyed grin, oblivious to where this line of questioning was taking him.

“If you have everything though that means your sisters will have nothing.  Do you think they’re happy when they don’t have anything to play with?”

“Yes,” he stated confidently before the judge.

“No, they’re not happy if you take all the toys and don’t share.  They’d like something to play with too.”

He handed a broken toy to his little sister – a sponge formerly shaped like a dinosaur but now shaped like a dinosaur that angered the mob and lost his limbs in the “reconciliation” process.  His little sister, through with her inspection of the red ball’s entire surface with her tongue and three teeth, dropped it uninterested, and gladly moved on to mushing the decapitated dinosaur sponge between her gums.  Gresham kept one eye on my moving mouth while slowly swimming one hand through the water like a stealthy shark slipping in for the kill.  He nonchalantly wrapped his fingers around the red ball slowly, like a lazy python stealing its prey from the shore, submerged it slowly so as not to be noticed, and slid it along the bottom of the tub until hidden under his thigh…

…while I asked, “Do you know what it’s called when someone has to have everything and doesn’t like to share?  Do you know what it’s called when you have enough toys but you have to have everyone else’s toys too?  Do you know what that’s called, Gresham?”

Blank stare.

“Greedy.  I don’t want you to be greedy, Gresham.  You have plenty of toys.  You don’t need everyone else’s too.”

Then the sentencing: No red ball, yellow ball or any other colored balls for the rest of bath time.  And punitive damages: He had to be the first one out of the bath tub.  Community service: Tomorrow he’s picking out five toys from his collection to give to kids who don’t have any toys.  Parole: He has to live with me until he’s eighteen.

Rest easy, World.  One white collar criminal down (or at least under surveillance); an entire generation to go.