“If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”

Sir Issac Newton said that. According to many current smart guys and gals — Neil deGrasse Tyson included — Issac Newton might be the smartest guy who ever lived.

Newton gave credit to those who came before him and through their knowledge, he was able to expand his own findings and theorems. I’m not going to lie, I have no theorems that I need to give anyone credit for. In truth, I did not even know how to spell “theorem” until I asked Siri. I kept typing “thermos.”

During this later stage of life, I’ve come to the realizatdion that I have limited skills. But my one gift might be that I pay attention and remember the advice that smart people have given me over the years. I have stood on the shoulders of those folks, sometimes claiming the smart stuff they told me was stuff I came up on my own.

My Catholic parents had six kids using the rhythm method of birth control, which explains my lack of dancing ability. I was the youngest by six years. My siblings were like having five extra parents.

My dad was the provider of much sage advice and criticisms. He told me, “Take care of your pennies; the dollars take care of themselves.” I am frugal; some call it cheap. 

“Never buy pie from a skinny person.” I don’t buy much pie, it’s too expensive. 

“A coward dies 1,000 deaths. A hero dies but once.” I think he stole that from Shakespeare. 

“Always use both sides of the toilet paper.” I’m not that cheap.

My brother Mark might be the smartest person I’ve ever met. He said, “listen more than you talk,” “always throw the first punch, at something soft, like the nose, throat or groin,” and “if someone is wrong about something unimportant, you don’t need to correct them.”

My sister Donna was the the kind one in my family. She said, “Some people are crazy. It’s not their fault, so be kind to them.”

My sister Martha was the funny one. She said, “Arrest him! He’s a menace!” She said this to a Boston motorcycle cop who stopped me on Route 24 because I was driving too slow. He assumed I was drunk. I wasn’t, but Martha was. She also told our childhood dentist that my preferred nickname was “Bucky,” a much-hated name due to my pronounced overbite. I walked into the dentist for the first time, and the dentist greeted me with, “Hiya, Bucky.”  

My sister Calista was confident and smart. She said, “If you don’t like yourself, why should anyone else?”

My oldest sibling is my brother Mike. Like all my siblings, he is brilliant yet also kind and Catholic. “Geez, little buddy, when the priest hears your confession he’ll need a stiff drink after.”

Mike never gave me much advice. The lessons he taught were through example. He was 13 years old when I was born, and he took my development in hand. He was determined to make me a great athlete. Beginning when I was about 4 years old, he would toss a baseball high in the air for me to catch. About half the time I’d catch the ball, and the other half it would hit me in the head. “What a tough monkey you are, little buddy. You didn’t even cry that time,” Mike would say. In retrospect, I think Mike’s intention was less about sports than to toughen me up. 

Mike did in fact make me tough, but I blame those baseballs to the head for my finishing high school with the grade-point average of a plant.

I’ve also been lucky enough to know and work with some guy and gals who were older and wiser. 

I loaded trucks with a guy named Bob Powers who quit school in 9th grade to work on the docks. He was the father of 10 children. After the 10th one was born, he came to work and told the crew, “I think I finally found out what causes that.” Bob was uneducated, but might have been the best-read person I had ever met. when I told him I wasn’t going to college he said, “go to college to get laid, go to the library to learn.”

Now granted, not all the advice was sound — I gave up on my Dad’s “use both sides of the TP” counsel after only a few weeks.

Jeffrey Bergeron’s column “Biff America” publishes Mondays in the Summit Daily News. Bergeron has worked in TV and radio for more than 30 years, and his column can be read in several newspapers and magazines. He is the author of “Mind, Body, Soul.” Bergeron arrived in Breckenridge when there was plenty of parking and no stoplights. Contact him at biffbreck@yahoo.com.