I’m getting kind of old.

Not so old, though, that I don’t remember those “good old golden rule days,” like, say, the fourth grade.

Fourth grade wasn’t my favorite year, school-wise. Fifth grade was a lot better. For one thing, fourth grade was the year I had one of those things we used to call “childhood diseases.” Those are the ones that some parents don’t want to get their kids vaccinated against, for fear their kids will turn into zombies or something. OK, it’s not zombies they’re afraid of, because zombies don’t exist, but autism. Of course, scientific studies say a connection between vaccinations and autism are no more real than zombies are, but some parents don’t believe that.

Well, what I had — I’m not sure whether it was measles, scarlet fever or both — wasn’t imaginary and neither were the doctor bills, both of which can now can be fended off with a cheap vaccination. I was out of school for quite a spell, and between the illness and the make-up work I had to do afterward, it left me with some pretty bad memories of fourth grade. The only plus I remember was that my teacher, who was one of those old-fashioned strict teachers who never seemed to smile, was really nice to me for several weeks.

Aside from the illness, my fourth grade experience, for some reason, left me feeling bad about school. Why, I don’t know, because I had a pretty good year in fifth grade and enjoyed it.

Fourth grade is also the year — at least I think it was — I was introduced to James Whitcomb Riley’s poem “Little Orphant Annie.” This wasn’t the comic strip Orphan Annie with the curly red hair, but a servant lady who told kids spooky stories to warn them to be good.

In one verse she told of a little boy who wouldn’t say his prayers and another verse was about a little girl who said mean and hurtful things to others. One of them disappeared from his bed and “two great big Black Things” got the other one and “snatched her through the ceilin’ ’fore she knowed what she’s about!” And every verse ended with the warning, “An’ the Gobble-uns ’ll git you/Ef you don’t watch out!”

Well, as I hinted at the last time my mug shot graced this space, these days we have a lot of Orphant Annies warning us about Gobble-uns, or — to use the conventional spelling — goblins. Unfortunately, the fears they plant in us are often misplaced, as in the case of vaccinations. The notion that there is a connection between vaccinations and autism has been thoroughly debunked by science. There is a slim chance of harmful side effects, as there is with any medical procedure, but there is a much greater chance of harm caused by diseases such as rubella, measles and scarlet fever.

It happens that I had all those diseases, plus chicken pox and mumps as a child with no ill effects, at least as far as anyone can tell. But vaccinations kept me from suffering some really bad illnesses, like diphtheria and, especially polio, which killed and crippled thousands before the vaccine was available.

I’m not arguing that there isn’t anything to fear out there. Some fear is actually healthy. It’s why we fasten seat belts, carry bear spray, lock our doors and get inside when an electrical storm rolls in.

Fear that is misplaced, unwarranted or out of proportion to an actual threat, though, is harmful. Fear of goblins that either don’t exist or are unlikely to hurt you distracts us from the real dangers that are out there and prevents us from taking proper action.

The case I cited last time, involving the school boy who built a digital clock at home and showed it to a teacher at school, is a case in point. The teacher thought it looked like part of a bomb, and so did the police, who arrested the boy. The boy happens to be Muslim, and I have to believe that was part of what scared his teacher.

Now, a kid who plans to blow up his school isn’t likely to bring the bomb he plans to use to school and show it off to his teacher, but the teacher’s immediate reaction was to assume the worst. And if his religion was the cause of her reaction, that’s a problem. By being over-sensitive to Muslims as terrorists, the teacher may fail to notice the kid who shows signs of mental illness and is preoccupied with death and violence, as so many of the school shooters have been.

That brings me back to where I ended my last column by saying I would talk about some of the fears our politicians are trying to raise in running for office. Unfortunately, I’m out of space, so you’ll have to wait some more. I may not get to it right away, but it’s a long time before the election, so there’s no hurry.

While you’re waiting, watch out for the gobble-uns, but make sure they are the gobble-uns that you really need to be afraid of before you react.