Duck People (copyright pending)

Last week I was working in the convention office when a very nice lady came in. At least I assume she was very nice; there actually wasn't much indication of that in the way she informed the person in charge of her needs and deadlines.

She left a noticeable stir in the air when she left the office.

"Wow, that was a real Duck Person," I said.

To my surprise, no one in the room had ever heard of the term, but then I remembered I made it up to describe some of the people in my professional world, and had neglected to copyright the phrase. So I explained:

A Duck Person is someone who has a vision of what should happen in the future. This vision can be enormous (world peace!) or it can be less enormous (lunch!). Unfortunately, because the duck person has an huge beak and is looking over that beak to the vision in the future, it's impossible for the Duck Person to see any of the frantic paddling that is going on under the surface of the water that will move all toward completion of the vision.

So it's obvious that calling someone a Duck Person can be either a compliment ("Wow! What a vision!") or an insult ("Can you not see that I'm already working on lunch?"), and can spur either more selfless effort or exaggerated eyerolling. Interestingly, the Duck People themselves seldom recognize which variety of Duck Person is being referenced.

Duck Person. You read it here first, and you're welcome.