Any of you know what a tontine is?

Here’s a toast to friendships — old and new, lost and found

In my most recent episode of being a complete idiot, I was lunching with two friends who hope to go to Scotland one of these days. They talked about a potential train ride that sounded great, and I remembered my dad had done something similar eons ago. “I think it’s called The Highland Fling,” I said.

Um, no.

I was really close. I got the “The” right, and the rest of my answer was only off by a dozen vowels and consonants. It’s The Royal Scotsman.

But it was a great wrong answer, because it made me wonder why The Highland Fling bubbled up from my memories. And that took me on an armchair adventure, half a world away from Scotland, half a lifetime ago, to a friendship that’s now only a memory.

It also reminded me of this great scene from “MASH,” when Colonel Potter recalls a tontine he made with four dear and now-deceased friends during World War I, then shares a couple of toasts with his Korean War comrades.

Once my faux train knowledge got derailed, I became 99% sure why I remembered The Highland Fling (allowing a 1% margin of error because my full-of-crappedness knows no bounds). It was a hotel bar in Sydney, one that had dozens and dozens of Scotches, even offering a passport so you could keep track of the ones you tried.

I first visited Sydney in September 1986, part of my compulsion to visit every continent except Antarctica before I turned 30 that October. When I went back the next month, wrapping up my Australian visit, my friend Bruce was there, in the midst of his own odyssey.

He was a Scotch drinker. Boy, have I got a bar for you …

No, we didn’t drink ourselves into Oblivion (another region I visited before I was 30), but my other memory of those three days with Bruce also involves alcohol, at least marginally. We went to the opera one night (I’m pretty sure it was “Rigoletto.” Either that or The Royal Scotsman). As we relaxed with a drink before the show, fireworks started going off in the harbor.

I’m not someone who goes out of his way to watch fireworks, but this was huge, celebrating the 75th anniversary of the Royal Australian Navy. And it was an adventure so lazy that even I couldn’t resist: Just turn around and look out the damn window.

Soon we had a choice: Be proper adults and go into the opera, or be uncultured swine and skip the first act so we could watch bombs burst in air over a picturesque harbor from one of the world’s iconic buildings.

Spoiler alert: Duh.

The Highland Fling and its hotel are long gone. Sadly, so is Bruce. He died nine years ago this week at age 67, the same age I am now, several years older than our fictional Colonel Potter was when he offered his toasts.

Potter reminded me of the friends from my youth that I had lost — my toast would probably be for Pete and Bill and Dave and Bruce — but he also said something I had to wrestle with: “As much as my old friends meant to me, I think you new friends mean even more.”

The writers of “MASH” were rarely sloppy and Potter wasn’t a character known for hyperbole, but that sentence and emotion certainly seemed over the top. After all, those old friends helped shaped his life in ways the new ones couldn’t touch.

Then I thought about it, and this:

1986 turned out to be a hell of year. Besides visiting Australia and New Zealand, I bought a condo, roomed with my friend Tony and met Cathy (both of whom are still around, thankfully). But I treasure that year — and The Highland Fling, and the Sydney Opera House — even more when I see it through an old man’s wide-angle lens rather than a 30-year-old’s telephoto.

Aging takes and it takes and it takes: weakening our bodies, eroding our minds, stealing our loved ones. But if you’re lucky, it makes up for it in emotions, helping you savor moments — from the past, the present and maybe even a future you never get to see.

You’re not so busy taking an Instagram photo that you forget to take it all in.

And that’s why, I’m guessing, that Colonel Potter’s new friends meant even more to him. He could see the beauty in their moments, even the tough ones, even if they couldn’t. He could look at each of them and see himself. He could look at each of them and see love.

They were in a war. He had found peace.

2024 is already a hell of a year. One set of my loved ones bought their first home, another is getting married, a third is expecting their first child, a fourth became in-laws. Others have it harder, coping as their loved ones, young and old, struggle with health issues, mental and physical.

War is hell. Sometimes life is, too.

So cherish the beauty, especially when it’s at its most elusive. Sometimes it sneaks up on you: Just turn around and look out the damn window.

I’m sure my friends will get to Scotland and have their highland fling, even if it’s officially The Royal Scotsman, even if it’s years from now.

I hope they’ll savor it. And if they don’t, I know an old guy in an armchair who’ll savor it for them.

Murphy Slaw

Something old: I’m not a dad, but this made me smile.

Something new: Scrabble now comes with a Gen Z twist: a less competitive way to play, without keeping score, the New York Post reports.

Something borrowed: I yield my time in this category to these women on Threads.

Something blue: People have a way with words sometimes.