Driving mirror

The existence of a person is a strange thing. From the moment we are born, we are a blank canvas ready to paint ourselves into a masterpiece, and be also painted by our actions. Every second of every day, our minds take in unquantifiable amounts of information, experiences, and inputs through our various senses. Every input we receive—mostly without us knowing—shapes who we are. We may think the exciting, the fresh, the unknown are what shape us into who we are, but it's really the various threads of mundanities, the innocuous, and the banal, that sew together to make us the wonderful tapestry that is our self. We process these informations and sensory inputs and experiences, sort them, then respond to them in a multitude of ways; adapting, deflecting, attacking, engaging, ignoring, abhorring, deploring, exploring, and we do this in order to facilitate the great journey we know as "life".

One of those multitudes, and perhaps the driving force behind the various gerunds of our actions, are our emotions. Humans have a wonderful gift, and that is to feel. Anger, Fear, Sadness, Disgust, Joy; all are emotions that individually or in unison respond to what you experience and help guide you to experience more (or less) of something. These little beings are here to help you, mostly.

And inside the head of one particular person, Riley Andersen, her emotions as her guide, goes through life experiencing much. The main driver behind the mind of Riley, the avatar of happiness, elation, euphoria, jubilation and all other manner of good feelings, is Joy. She takes great pride in knowing how to keep Riley in tip top bliss. The other emotions tend to defer to her will, but Joy somewhat recently discovered that sometimes Riley's happiness comes from another source other than her Joy—the other emotions. They take control and lead her from astray back to a mentally-healthy path.


Yes, Joy deeply loves Riley and would do anything to make her as happy as possible, and for the most part, she is greatly successful. Today would be another such day, or so Joy thought.

"GuuuuUUUUYS! Wakey wakey! It's the biiiiig daaaaaaaay!"

Tired murmurs and sleepy mumbles of the other emotions came in vague reply as Joy, coming off from another night of dream duty, performed her customary musical and sing-song alarm using her faithful companion Huggs, an accordion Joy secretly pilfered from the Train of Thought as it stopped at HQ's station. As Joy bounced around the HQ's sleeping area performing a whimsical tune, her glee was harshly broken by the cracking gasp of Fear; "Big day, wait what's that?!"

Joy, statuesque for a moment, grinned before she leapt up and pressed her face into the face of her grey, stick-thin friend. "Why, of course, today is when Riley starts learning to drive!"

Riley sat in a makeshift waiting room with a few of her fellow students, some she knew and chatted to, some she recognized only in passing, awaiting her turn to take her tentative steps into the realm of driving. She was now 16, and according to some law she didn't care about, this meant she was now responsible enough to be trusted with a contraption that harnessed the energy from explosions to turn wheels in order to propel it forwards or backwards. Fear made certain to point this out every time Joy mentioned how excited she was to get behind the wheel of a car. He also made certain to list the accident statistics for Riley's age group, the cost of medical bills, the dangers of airbags, whatever he could to deter any of the emotions from allowing Riley to go ahead with any of it.

"It'll be fine, you silly goose! Those statistics are all phony!" Joy chuckled as she watched Riley chatting with friends, dismissing Fear's misgivings as what they usually were: over-hyped pointless nannying.

Joy lost herself in daydream as she explored all the possibilities the freedom of driving would bring the free-spirited Riley, until she felt a tug on her dress's hem. "Joy?" said Sadness, peering from behind her to-large-for-her-face spectacles. "It's our turn."

"Riley Andersen?" bellowed an deep, gravelly authoritative voice which came from the shadowy figure standing in the fire exit doorway, haloed by the bright sunshine of the outside. the outline showed a lanky, stocky figure that looked hugely imposing and downright unsettling, the sort of person you did not want to cross or meet anywhere, let alone a dark alley. Riley, gulping exactly as her Fear did, stood from the plastic stool she had been sitting in for about an hour, meekly she replied, "Y-yes?" as a purple-grey memory orb rolled into the short-term memory banks.

"Joy, don't let her goooo," moaned Fear as he shielded himself from the viewscreen's bright image of the shadowy figure. Joy was about to reply to him when the shadow spoke again, in a less-than-amused tone; "Come this way, please." Yet more purple-grey memory orbs rolled into the banks. The other emotions exchanged glances, and they all looked up at Joy, who herself gulped.

"Well, we can't just not go." she said, seemingly trying to convince herself that it was all dandy. She pushed the dual-levers on the Mind Console and Riley moved to the outside.

Her school car-park, usually filled to bursting with teacher's and visitor's vehicles, was completely empty. Riley looked around as her eyed adjusted to the sunlight; she spotted road cones had been placed everywhere, in various arrangements of shapes, patterns and lines. A large shadow suddenly loomed over the girl and she gasped as a throat was cleared to get her attention.

"The cars are this way." said the man. Now in full view of daylight, Riley saw his face clearly: his expression, adorned by weathered wrinkles and leathery liver spots and topped with thinning wispy grey hair, split by a square Roman-esque nose, dotted with two grey eyes and framed by a square jaw and thin-ish slightly pouting lips, was an expression of indifference. Riley eyed him up and down, taking in her instructor: he looked like an old businessman, he wore a thick brown blazer and pinstriped black-grey suit pants, an off-white unbuttoned suit shirt with a grey t-shirt underneath, and he kept an expensive-looking pen in the blazer pocket. The man lifted up a clip-board and wrote something down before he motioned Riley to where the two vehicles were parked.

"Oh boy, here we go!" Joy exclaimed as Fear chewed where his fingernails (if he had any) would be. Sadness and Anger were passively standing next to each other watching the viewscreen, but suddenly they were pushed aside by Disgust, who pointed at the screen; "Wait a minute, we're supposed to drive THOSE?!"

All the emotions stared in bemusement at the two cars. To call them rustbuckets would be an understatement. They were pink, when it was obvious they used to be red. The wheel aches were crusty with rust and flaked paint, the windshield had thick dust, dirt and grime where the wipers did not reach, the shape of each was boxy and they clearly belonged in those scrap-car programs where rednecks men gleefully wreck, shoot, crush or burn old cars for amusement. "This is a joke. Just look at those seats. We CANNOT let Riley get in these things." said Disgust as she angrily smacked and struck various buttons on the console. The glassy knock of green memory orbs tacitly signaled Riley's agreement with her green emotion's vexation.

"Oh come in, it can't be tha-" Joy began before the instructor interrupted her

"You have two options. You can drive the automatic, or the manual," the old fellow explained in the least interesting (and interested) way possible "If you drive the automatic and pass, you can't drive a manual car. If you drive the manual and pass, you can drive either. I recommend you drive the manual so you have options for the future, but it's up to you."

"Is he serious? A MANUAL?" Fear shrieked, "They are too dangerous! If we start the car in gear it'll EXPLODE, I JUST KNOW IT." Fear leaped to action and began hitting the console with abandon. Anger, brow furrowed, sauntered to Fear and finally opened his mouth; "We're going in the manual car, you fool. Then, we can get whatever car we want and nobody, not even this crusty old geezer here, can tell us otherwise."

Fear gulped as the other emotions murmured agreements. "So it's decided," chirruped Joy, "we're going in the manual! Woop woop!"

Riley flopped into the drivers seat and felt her nerves spike as she gazed at the dashboard and instrument cluster. It looked complicated and the steering wheel was scaring her and the pedals looked imposing and the speedometer went to a number that seemed way too high for her, and the gear lever looked like it wanted to kill her, and- "Fear, calm down. It's just a lesson today. We won't be going fast." comforted Sadness, offering her hand to his so he could grasp it for some support, which he did so with a vice-like grip that made Sadness wince.

"This car, is way too dusty and it smells like old man chair." moaned Disgust, who got a nod of agreement from Anger; "I've heard dad call these sorts of cars a shi-"

"Okay young lady," said the monotonous instructor as he clambered into the car. His forceful sitting-down make the car's weight shift around and creak as the car's clearly very soft suspension attempted to neutralize the movements. "We're going to perform a simple start and stop for now. You will place the keys into the ignition and turn them two notches until the lights on the instrument cluster ignite. Then you will check your mirrors and then you will-"

"Is this guy serious?" growled Anger as his temples bulged and his pupils contracted a little. "He expects us to know all of this stuff, on the first lesson? Why I outta..."

Joy swiftly placed herself between the red emotion and the console he was about to smack, "Whooa there, let's not get too hasty now. We'll just have to recall the driving manuals we read last week and it'll all be fine!" Joy quickly and deftly pressed a multitude of console buttons and not a second later a memory orb rose from the vacuum tube and floated in the air, which then handily displayed much information on the various controls and and actions that one would need to perform when starting and driving a car. Anger's simmering forehead cooled significantly, and Joy allowed herself an inward sigh of relief.

"Oooh no..." Fear whimpered as Riley slid the key into the ignition, the metallic tumblers and pins scraping against the key's teeth echoing ominously as though Riley was about to do something terrible. Shaking a little, she gulped and turned the key forward. A sudden harsh noise of a starter motor turning made her yelp and retract her hand from the key, which snapped back into a turn position. Fear basically fainted and Sadness crouched to "resuscitate" as yet more fear memory orbs crashed into each other in the memory racks.

"I said turn it two NOTCHES," grumbled the instructor, "not two TURNS. Try again, but from the original position ok?"

Riley turn the key back towards herself, then, much much more carefully, turned the key a little, and it clicked once. She gasped a little; this must be the first position. Then she did so again. Another click, the second position. As the key settled, some lights flared on the instrument cluster; a red O with an exclamation mark in it (which she remembered as the handbrake indicator), an orange engine shape, a yellow oil canister, a thermometer, and the odometer and speedometer gauges performed a test rotation, then settled back into their rest points. The car was now ready to start.

"Now, perform the mirror and neutral checks, please, and make any necessary adjustments." asked the man, idly, which Riley did so, tweaking the rear-view mirror a little and knocking the gear lever from side to side to see if it was in gear or not. "Are you satisfied?" Riley nodded, nervously. "Then you may start the car."

Fear, shaking and sweating bullets, grabbed Joy and whimpered a plea, but Joy ignored him. "This is it." said Anger, wringing his hands with excitement. Fire and explosions were something he enjoyed greatly, and a car was essentially an exploding, fiery contraption. Each of the 5 emotions began to squeeze together, cautiously (or excitedly) awaiting the moment of truth.

Riley turned the key... the car responded by shaking and sputtering into life. It chugged and whirred, the squeaking sound of a alternator belt long overdue a refit rang harshly in everyone's ears, and Riley gritted her teeth from the pain, as did her emotions. "We... we did it!!" Joy and Anger together exclaimed, performing a jumping high-five. Fear wiped his sweaty brow, allowing himself a little respite from his nerves, and Sadness and Disgust both smiled at each other and the screen.

"Now, depress the clutch and place the gear lever into the first gear position." said the instructor.

Riley gawped at him. "Wait, I thought..." she began, before he cut her off.

"This is a DRIVING lesson, not a sit-in-the-car-and-starting-it lesson. Please, place the car..." Riley frowned and looked at the gear lever, ignoring the condescending remarks of her instructor. At the same time, Joy, Sadness and Fear were restraining a furious Anger from taking over the console. Disgust had little input in this matter, so she resigned herself to playing with her fingernails.

"Ok..." Riley said to herself as she slowly grasped the gear lever and pressed her foot into the loose clutch. "Here goes..."

"By all means, take all day," chided the instructor.

This remark was the absolute last straw for Anger, and a sudden surge of wrathful fury allowed him to overpower the three emotions restraining him. "Ok old man, you want me to drive?! Well, DRIVE THIS!" he roared as he slammed the dual-lever controls forward with a loud, satisfying thud.

Riley responded to Anger's inputs by harshly thrusting the gear lever into its position with a metallic clunk, swiftly lowering the hand brake, and rapidly lifting the clutch pedal as she planted her right foot into the accelerator. The car screamed in response, revving its pathetic engine and spinning its wheels, emanating both a harsh screech and a thick cloud of cloying white smoke. The car lurched forward a little as the spinning wheels found some traction, but suddenly the engine died, the wheels stopped screeching and the car came to a sudden halt.

Calmly the instructor asked Riley to remove her feet from the pedals, which she did so, once she had regained awareness of herself and her surroundings. The instructor, clearly unaffected by the outburst, removed the car from gear and raised the handbrake. "All instruction cars have dual controls. Don't worry, you won't ever crash the car." chuckled the instructor. His bemusement was the first time he had expressed any emotion at all, and Riley sunk into her chair as she felt a wave of embarrassment surge through her body. She felt the boring stares of teachers and students as peered into the car, and she heard laughs and exclamations and gossip; "Was that Riley?"

"Wow, she totally sucks at driving."

"Should we call the principle?"

 "I want to crawl into a hole and die." Riley thought with despair as, in her HQ, a tubular bell chimed, signalling an memory of significance had been created. The 5 emotions scrambled over to see it. It was an orb of four colors; red, green, blue and finally grey-purple. As the blue-green-grey-red orb rolled towards the core memory bank and the other four emotions awkwardly exchanged looks with each other, Joy felt herself deflate.

The emotions watched as the orb settled into its new position and beyond the windows overlooking the various areas of Riley's brain, an island of personality began to form. It looked like a car scrap yard, with crash test dummies splayed under, on and amongst wrecked cars, as a tall looming figure holding a clipboard silently oversaw the automotive chaos beneath him.

Sadness stepped forward first and said without consideration for potential insult to injury, said "Ooh... that doesn't look good."

"I told you guys this was a bad idea." Fear said smugly, hands on hips as though his vindication warranted a sanctimonious pose.

"We'll be the laughing stock of the school!" professed Disgust with no small measure of panic, as she clasped Joy's dress's neckline and pulled the emotion around, "We'll never live this down! We can never come back to school."

Joy, usually so full of exuberance and encouragement, this resigned herself to simply allowing the other emotions to do their jobs as they ran to the console to squabble over Riley's emotions, "I don't think Riley will be happy driving." she said to herself despondently. The dreams of freedom and possibility were gone, it seemed. She looked to her side and saw Anger as still with her. He glared with disappointment at the newly-completed Car Disaster Island.

"I was looking forward to driving, Joy." he said quietly. "The endless possibilities, racing other people, the freedom to explore the country, opportunities to go to fun places with our friends..." Joy, understanding his pain, placed a hand softly on his shoulder. "It'll be ok," she comforted.

After their quiet moment together, Anger's forehead began to smolder as he soon got over his gloom, "I'll tell you one thing," he growled as his head began to flare, "this whole driving thing is a pile of sh-"