Arnold Webber always knew his 7 year old son’s fluffy wasn’t like other fluffies but he had always assumed it was because the damned thing was dumber than a sack of shit. The stupid bio toy had been an unwanted surprise holiday gift from his son Maxwell’s Aunt, Arnold’s sister-in-law, and was probably the single worst present she could have ever gotten him. Even though he logically knew otherwise Arnold couldn’t shake the suspicion that the fluffy was a carefully chosen present meant to punish him and not merely an over the top Christmas gift to win Max’s favor.
Lydia adored Max but her relationship with Arnold had always been strained. Likely she never thought he was good enough for her older sister, their family’s golden child, though she never actually said anything to that effect. Not he knew about at least and after… yeah, his relationship with his in-laws never really bounced back. So she saddled him with a fluffy instead.
The fluffy in question, a fat pink creature named Piggy, could barely be considered litter box trained on a good day, regularly forgot whatever asinine topic he was talking about mid sentence, couldn’t be trusted with a water bowl lest he drown while drinking from it, had fallen down their single step front landing on several occasions, had the same level of understanding of object permanence as an actual baby, and was unfortunately so dearly beloved by Max that Arnold couldn’t conscience getting rid of the thing. Much to his quiet displeasure Piggy was here to stay. So he had to make it work.
Max was responsible for cleaning up Piggy’s many, many, many messes when he got home from school, was the sole individual responsible for feeding and watering Piggy and more importantly making sure Piggy didn’t choke or drown during mealtimes, and had a small portion of his allowance put aside each week to pay for Piggy’s food and toys. Arnold secretly put that money away in a small bank account and paid for the fluffy’s upkeep himself but he wanted to make sure the intent was there on Max’s part.
Max was a good kid. Quiet, a bit shy sure, but his heart was always in the right place and he was a sweet boy. He was Arnold’s pride and joy. So what if he wanted to play baby games with a mentally and physically stunted pink horse, even if said pink horse pissed and shit near constantly and sounded like a low budget toddler’s cartoon character on extra helium. Max loved Piggy with the pure simplicity that only a child could manage and Arnold would be damned if he was the one to ruin that.
All Arnold wanted was for his son to grow up happy and knowing that he loved him no matter what. Therefore Piggy’s continued existence in their household was tolerated by proxy. So when his son had come home one day from school needing help on a practice math test Arnold was less than enthused when Piggy insisted on joining them at the kitchen table but he allowed it. Well, under the kitchen table at Max’s feet, thank god, but still allowed.
Math wasn’t exactly Max’s best subject and he was already struggling to learn his multiplication tables. Arnold was sure that the little pink waste of space was going to turn into a distraction sooner than later and was already dreading the uphill battle that would follow to get his son back on track with his homework. Steeling his nerves Arnold flipped the three paged packet open and presented Max with the first section: multiples of two. “Alright bud, let’s start easy. What’s two times three?”
“Uhh.” Max went to his fingers. “That’s… counting to three twice?”
Arnold nodded and Max counted out three fingers on both hands and then counted all of them together. “Six!”
Getting another nod from his father Max hurried to write down his answer. Arnold knew that Max couldn’t use the finger trick forever but at least he was able to understand what the question was asking him to do.
“Next up is two times five.”
Again Max went to his hands, figuring out quickly that he had five fingers on each hand aka twice, and he knew that he had ten fingers total so that was the answer. The next two questions were two times two and two time four and Max’s finger counting worked for both but question five threw him a curveball. “What is two times seven?”
Max frowned at his hands. He didn’t have enough fingers to count to seven twice. He tried and it didn’t work. He frowned and looked up at his dad. “I dunno.”
Arnold sighed and picked up his own pencil to write on Max’s sheet. He started drawing seven small lines under question five. “‘I dunno’ isn’t a good enough answer. You’re going to have to memorize some of this sooner or later, there’s more numbers out there than you can count on your hands. Remember your addition?”
Max nodded sullenly and started to kick his legs under the table. “Yeah…”
“Alright, so you had the right idea earlier,” Arnold tapped question four as an example, “two times five is counting to five twice or…”
It took Max a moment to finish the thought. “Five… plus five?”
“That’s it!” Arnold gave Max a big smile and tilted the paper back towards him. Under question five he had drawn two groups of seven lines with a plus sign between than then under than wrote “7 + 7 = “ under that. “So for question five the answers will be…?”
“Seven… thir-fourteen?”
Arnold nodded and tapped the little space next to the question for Max to write the answer. The rest of the twos table went along in a similar fashion. Max had figured out that he could translate the multiplication into addition and was more comfortable like that. He was doing fine until he hit the threes table.
“Three times three.” Arnold prompted. He just needed to lead Max into realizing that it was just three plus three plus three and so on and he’d be fine, but the connection that Max had made for the twos table wasn’t coming as readily for the threes. Arnold was about to rewrite the problem for him when Max’s attention was stolen by a little pink hoof tapping his leg.
“Widdew Daddeh upsies!” The obnoxious waste of space squeaked and Max was pulling Piggy into his lap before Arnold could protest.
“Nuh uh uh. Piggy has to stay on the ground until we’re done. This is homework time, not play time. If he’s going to distract you then Piggy will have leave the room.” Arnold warned sternly. He was honestly a little impressed that the creature had managed to leave them alone for this long but was willing to credit that to Piggy’s nonexistent brain cells than any intentional good behavior on the fluffy’s part. He’d once caught Piggy staring blankly at an empty wall for over an hour so ten minutes under a table was probably nothing for the fluffy.
Max frowned and gave the pink blob a squeeze, causing Piggy’s little beady eyes to bulge out a little and pass some gas, but like a good boy he went to put Piggy back down like his father asked.
“Nuuuuuuu! Buh Piggy wan hewpies!” Piggy squealed and turned to put his hooves on Max’s shirt. “Thwee thwees is thwee thwee thwee!”
Both Max and Arnold paused which allowed Piggy to continue his little explanation. “Thwee,” he tapped three times on Max’s shirt, “thwee,” three more taps, “ an’ thwee,” three final taps, “is thwee thwees.”
“Nuh-“ Max frowned as he looked down at Piggy. “Nine?”
Arnold raised his eyebrows in surprise and nodded as his son jotted down the answer. The correct answer.
“Piggy nu kno ‘nine’, jus kno thwee thwees is thwee thwee thwee. Oh aw two thwees an’ thwee, aw thwee twos an’ thwee, aw two thwee-one an’ one, aw thwee-one twos an’ one, aw-“ the fluffy continued to obliviously rattle off all sorts of different combinations that added up to or multiplied and added up to nine. The value of nine. Arnold could swear that, for the first time in Piggy’s dull little useless life, there was a light on behind the fluffy’s eyes. “-aw one one one one one one one one one!”
There’s no way this could be real, Arnold thought but Max was already catching on and trying other problems on Piggy.
“What’s three times five, uh, one sec,” Max scribbled out how to translate five into something Piggy would understand. “three three-twos?”
“Das thwee-two thwee-two thwee-two aw thwee thwee thwee thwee thwee aw one one one one one one one one one one one one one one one. Buh thwee thwee-twos am ee-see-est to say. Aww samesies.” Piggy chirped.
Max glanced at his dad who, despite the befuddled look on his face, nodded slowly as he puzzled out what Piggy was saying. Piggy had counted out three fives, then five threes, and then fifteen, fucking fifteen, ones without missing a beat.
Arnold was astounded. Piggy, his son’s dumber than shit fluffy, the fluffy that Arnold was hoping would one day choke on his own spit and accidentally up and die, was doing Max’s multiplication homework better than Max was. What the fuck.
Arnold excused himself from the table and got up to get himself a glass of water.
“This is so cool! Let’s do another one!” Max cheered and picked out another math problem. Piggy wiggled happily in his little daddy’s lap, tickled pink with all the positive attention he was getting. Today was the very bestest day ever as far as the two of them were concerned.
Arnold listened from the sink as Piggy got another, and another, and yet another multiplication problem right. Nobody was going to believe this. Hell, even he was having trouble believing this and it was happening right in front of him.
At least Max was having fun with his math homework.