Consider The Platypus

This is Pythagoras the Platypus.

Do you know about the platypus? You should. (Marvelous creatures, they are.)

Firstly, you need to know that the platypus is a mammal…that lays eggs.

Yes.

As to the design of this chimerical creature: Pythagoras has the bill of a duck, the tail of a beaver, and paws similar to an otter…except huge, webbed, and tipped with poisonous claws.

In summary, nature has gifted us with an egg-laying mammalian poisonous duckbeaver.

And it gets weirder.

The name attached to the animal is also strange: it has NO agreed-upon plural; all ways to pluralize “platypus” are both right AND wrong.

Now, it ends U-S, so pluralizing as “platypi” is technically acceptable. (Favored among Latinists and people who like weird words.)⠀

There’s also the Greek-inspired platypodes, preferred by those with a more Philhellenic bent; or the awkward sounding platypuses and the far-too-obvious vulgar shift to playtpussies. The singular can act as the plural, as well.

It could be any of those, or none—because there’s no agreement in the scientific community, making the platypus as anomalous linguistically as it is biologically.

But it gets even weirder.

While there’s no standard plural, there is an accepted collective noun: a group is called a “puddle.”

So if you happen to cross paths with a group of them, and you get stumped with, “Check out all of those platypus…es? Platypi? Platypodes?” you can bypass it entirely and say, “Hey, look, a puddle of poisonous duckbeavers.”

The oddity that is the platypus unifies us all, rendering belief systems immaterial: both creationists and evolutionists can agree this is one weird fucking creature.

Of course, there’s something more important to consider: you just read a lot about the platypus.

You couldn’t stop once you started. You were drawn in and your attention held.

That, my friends, is the most valuable skill in the world.

I can do this with a silly poisonous duckbeaver…

Can YOU do it with something important, something related to your business?

My mentorship clients can. It’s one of the many keys to great writing—writing the truly captures and holds your audience’s attention— we focus on.  Learn to write well and you’ve given yourself the ability to improve everything in your life and career by orders of magnitude.

If you’re interested in improving your writing and storytelling, or learning more about business coaching in general, check it out here, and let me know if you have any questions.