I have this uncle, an airline pilot, who developed a bitterness habit, characterized by What’s-the-Use-type exclamations, that roughly – well, alright, exactly – coincided with the moment our Congress allowed the airline and union to dissolve his pension. *poof*

It happened just a few short years before the forced-retirement phase of his 37-year career. He found himself booted out of Happy Retirement Land (where your income and health care coverage are guaranteed to sustain life), dragging his own luggage into Retirement? What Retirement? Welcome to Super*Mart-Ville.

Most of us know the place, I suspect.

He eventually landed a job with a corporate jet company. Nice job, good folks. Layoff. He’s unemployed again … and happier than he’s been since being a pilot was just a wish he made on birthday candles.

Why’s that? Well, because there are certain upsides to unemployment. If you’re unemployed, you know what I’m talking about: when one lacks a certain degree of control, one sometimes experiences the same free-wheeling, “what the heck” euphoria that drives a kid to buy another ticket to ride the triple-loop coaster.

You can’t help it. For every day when you re-connect with the reality that $300-a-week unemployment income won’t keep you in lattes and designer clothes … or a house … there comes another day when you laugh and tell your niece how beautiful the Blue Ridge Mountains appear from the back of a motorcycle.

So, Mike and I had one of those days recently; and we took our misguided joie de vie to see the new Harry Potter movie.

Alright, here’s the humiliating truth: I’m a PotHead. Yes, I read literature and recognize the clear limits of J.K. Rowling’s prose, just as any good cocktail-party-intellectual would do – but, honestly? The woman created a fabulous world, and I am awe-struck by the achievement and a devoted (and detail-oriented) fan. Wish I could pass that off as my eight year-old’s obsession, not mine, but I can’t. Have to own it, so I am.

Perhaps that is why I felt so ruthlessly betrayed, when, in the very first scene of the movie, the moguls-that-be showed Harry trying to pick up a busty waitress in a whistle stop café.

I didn’t actually yell “WHAT THE—?!?” in the theater, because I think that might be illegal behavior (and I can’t afford the ticket just now), but I was sure thinking it. They changed Harry Potter’s character.

They did it in the last scene, too – and I won’t mention how, because I hate to be a spoiler, but my fellow Potheads will know the problem when they see it.

They changed the character. How dare they do that?

I was moody (not the Mad-Eye sort, either) for the rest of the day. In fact, I’m still perturbed. But it made me think: here we are, at a coming-of-age junction (of sorts) with Whistle Corps. I have to grow the business, have to do it quickly, and that necessitates some changes: opening new markets, marketing with some renewed verve and enforcing some policies that I’m not used to being a stickler about.

But I’d better stay true to our character while we do it. We have clients we’ve been working with for ten years, in some cases. They know what to expect from us: they know our values and service standards. We’re like Hogwarts! Alright, maybe that last part is all in my mind, but, if I change the character of our business just to grow the franchise … well, people are known to walk out on that sort of thing.