So Wayne Bailey, if youre listening, you are my hero.

As luck would have it some mates of Baileys were listening, got in touch with him and he called the program.

You rescued me from this bully, Sandra got to tell him. Every time she saw a little red-headed boy thereafter, she thought of her knight in shining armour, Wayne.

I'm a ranga, Wayne said, then continued self-effacingly: Thats what us rangas do.

He added that, back in the 1960s, redheads were known as carrot tops.

Sandra then got to tell him: You were the sweetest well-mannered young man. You had a huge impact on the way I raised my children.

You could tell Wayne didnt know what to say. He was humbled. I was raised mainly by my grandmother who was an upstanding sort of a woman and shes rubbed off onto me in many ways.

And you rubbed off on me, and for that I am ever grateful, Sandra said.

Presenter Sarah Macdonald said she was moved to tears. It was what they call in radio a driveway moment a story that keeps you in the car after youve reached your destination just to listen.

I was moved by the story too because for many years, in the 1940s and 50s, my grandmother, Ettie Aiken, was the kindergarten teacher at Rosehill Infants.

Coincidentally, as I was listening I found her 1948 edition of the childhood classic Snugglepot and Cuddlepie, which shed read to generations of Rosehill Public kindergarteners, including my cousin. I was responding to one of those Facebook challenges from an Aiken relative to find seven books I love and post them on social media (Ive finally succumbed thats what prolonged isolation does to you).

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While thumbing through this well-worn and well-read book, out fell some old unsent Christmas cards, painted by Athol Thompson, an armless Tasmania artist whose work featured in the Mouth and Foot Painting Artists Christmas card collection. Our family always bought and sent these Christmas cards, and simply seeing them was like receiving a message from beyond the grave from my grandmother.

She died 50 years ago, just before I started kindergarten. But my favourite memory is of her reading aloud from this book and her other May Gibbs classics. I still have them all and consider them old friends: Mr & Mrs Bear, Scotty in Gumnut Land, Ragged Blossom and my personal favourite, Little Obelia, who lay asleep in a pearl at the bottom of the ocean. While she slept a wonderful wisdom grew in her, which she would dispense only after going into her thinking room and counting up her pearls.

Like Little Obelia, Ive been going into my metaphoric thinking room a lot these days.

Retreating into the world of the gumnut babes and the bad banksia men was such a nostalgia trip like I think we're all taking at the moment because somehow the past is comforting. I even found, in some more recent editions of May Gibbs classics on my bookshelf, clippings from this newspaper about the fight to save Nutcote Cottage, her former home.

I was reminded of some precious pearls passed down Little Obelia-like - from my grandmother via my mother to me. When a child is cruel or a bully in the class or playground, theyre simply scared and testing the waters about how to navigate social situations. She felt that while learning to read was important, learning to read the room was more so.

"The key to kindergarten is learning kindness," she'd say.

So just as Wayne Bailey said his grandmother rubbed off on him in many ways, Ive vowed to let my own grandmother rub off on me since hearing his story. I think shed retired from teaching by the time Sandra and Wayne made it to kindy in 1960s Sydney. But the kindness ethos prevailed at Rosehill Infants. Wayne Bailey would have passed the kindergarten test with flying colours.

Helen Pitt is a journalist at the The Sydney Morning Herald.

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Learning to read the room is key to kindergarten success - Sydney Morning Herald