“OVLO Enough For Me”

It was an UVLO seal if Ramoun ever saw one. It was a heavy disk, five feet in diameter, hanging on the gates to UVLO knolls. It was made of pure bronze, and its fringes were plated with gold. A plastic representation of an UVLO magnified at least 1,500 times its original dimensions was on its center.

Ramoun could clearly see the details on this scale. He appreciated how the UVLO was so well designed. He looked back on the days when he was designing an UVLO himself. He remembered how he had mistaken it for an OVLO at first, his immediate superior being one of those people with U and O issues. An OVLO he wouldn’t be as pleased in making as he would have been with an UVLO. This had got him down, he remembered, on that first day. It wasn’t until he got hold of the diagram and saw that it was indeed an UVLO he was expected to construct that his spirit brightened up a bit.

In fact, it brightened up a lot. His work on his UVLO was the highest point in his career, the days he spent on it the happeist of his life.

Every morning he would rouse himself from a 2-hour sleep with an exultant smile on his face. Without breakfast he would pick up where he had left off when he had stopped working 3AM of the same morning.

As the sun rose on the east-facing window not far from his station, Ramoun was actively figuring out the UVLO. He more than studied it; Ramoun acquainted himself with it. He tried to understand it as he would a human friend. He sought its wants, it desires, and this he did by having ocassional conversations with it. Ramoun wouldn’t have it that he delivered what the UVLO required merely according to what he, the designer, thought it needed. Ramoun wanted a much deeper, much more personal bond.

Unfortunately, however, this desire in him to contruct his UVLO as best as possible, became a disadvantage. Before he knew it, the deadline was twenty minutes away, and he hadn’t even finalized anything yet.

The announcement from his immediate superior came as a severe shock in his stage of just trying-to-get-to-know his UVLO. He was saddened by it, not so much because he was facing a possible humiliation in front of his lovedones if he didn’t finish the UVLO on time, than because in twenty minutes he knew he would part with his UVLO forever.

Ramoun finished his UVLO with a heavy heart.

He didn’t care anymore whether he would end up with a good design or not. He was so bitter that these happy times would have to end so soon—it had only been three days since he was allowed to begin work on it.

He submitted it for consideration five seconds before the designated deadline. His immediate superior accepted it with a dubious raising of the right eyebrow, and a question: “Is this what you call an OVLO?”

“An UVLO, sir, yes,” answered gloomily Ramoun.

There was a change in his immediate superior’s facial expression. He smiled to himself as if in satisfaction. “Well,” he said, “OVLO enough for me.” He suddenly started laughing, and it lasted till the end of the work day.

© Jay Santos 2003.