Bad news bears.
We’ve all encountered bad news bears. I’m not talking about bad people who do bad things, and I’m not referring to the movies about the Little League misfits. I’m definitely not talking about Yogi and Boo-Boo stealing “pic- a-nic” baskets in Jellystone Park. The bad news bears that have splattered my radar are people who love to be the bearers of bad news — and not necessarily their own bad news, but the bad news of other people. I guess another word that fits the bill is “gossip,” as a noun, a verb or simply add a "y" for an adjective. When I was a young girl, I remember that whenever a specific elderly aunt of my father called, hours were spent afterward dissecting all the bad news she delivered. So-and-so was getting divorced, great uncle Thomas’s brother-in-law’s sister’s nephew had leukemia, or her friend’s cat had kittens and all but one died because a nasty little neighbor kid stuck them in a mayonnaise jar. For a child, these phone calls didn’t provide food for thoug