Macarenas in the Snow: A Teenager’s Guide to Social Grace

There is snow falling outside Sarah’s window.

Not the postcard kind, she insists — “just a little bit,” the kind that melts on scarves and turns pavements into slush. It’s November where she is, already flirting with –6°C. On the other side of the screen, her teacher laughs and admits she prefers sun. Two different climates, one shared connection: an online English meeting that very quickly stops being about grammar and becomes about something far more universal — how we show up for other people.

By the time their call ends, they’ve travelled from shyness to confidence, from awkward silence to the Macarena, from social etiquette to empathy, from invisible days to meerkat life-coaches. It’s part language lesson, part philosophy class, part comedy sketch.

And if you let yourself listen in, really listen, you start to realise: this isn’t just about one teenager preparing for a trip to Germany. It’s a quiet masterclass in how we all could be a little kinder, a little braver, and a lot more intentional with the way we talk to each other.

The Connection Spark

The official theme of the meeting is “social skills.”

The teacher frames it simply: social skills are “the way that we talk and communicate with other people… how we show empathy and how we build relationships.” They’re also, she adds, what create that rare “connection spark” — that moment when you meet someone new and you just click.

For Sarah, that spark often starts with humour.

“I think when I’m shy, I become funny or crazy,” she says, searching for the English. “I change my shyness to be… extrovert.”

It’s a beautifully honest admission. When she feels unsure, she doesn’t freeze — she performs. She leans into jokes, funny comments, unexpected questions. Sometimes the opening line is as simple as, “So… what’s the weather today?”

And isn’t that familiar? How many of us use humour as our first bridge — a throwaway line, a shared laugh that says, It’s safe to be yourself here?

What Makes Someone Instantly Likeable?

When the teacher asks, “What makes someone instantly likeable?” Sarah doesn’t hesitate for long.

She doesn’t talk about fashion, followers, or charisma. She talks about presence.

“It’s when the person is open… when they are interested in you,” she says. “When you talk with a person who doesn’t care about you, you can just go.”

In other words, people who feel good to be around do one simple thing: they care. They lean in. Their attention tells you, without words, You matter. I see you.

It’s almost disarmingly simple — and it’s also where most of us trip up. We’re busy, distracted, half-scrolling while someone is telling us about their day. We’re already preparing our answer instead of really listening.

Turning Awkward into Funny

Awkwardness is a recurring guest in teenage life — and in adult life, if we’re honest.

When asked how she handles uncomfortable moments, Sara doesn’t talk about escaping them; she talks about transforming them.

“When I’m embarrassed about a situation, I just turn that into funny,” she says. “I change the subject, I ask, ‘Do you know what happened last night?’ Just to relax the atmosphere.”

She doesn’t deny the discomfort. She redirects the energy. She chooses topics everyone can join in on, widening the circle instead of closing it.

There’s a subtle emotional intelligence at work here: she reads the room, senses the tension, and responds with a story instead of silence, a question instead of withdrawal.

The Deep Human Need: To Understand and Be Understood

Midway through the lesson, the teacher reads a quote:

“The most basic of all human needs is the need to understand and be understood.”

Sara immediately translates that into her own world:

“If you don’t speak about what you feel or what you think, you are alone — and it’s very bad to be alone,” she says. “If you need to be understood, you have to understand the others.”

This is the quiet genius of the conversation: it keeps circling back to reciprocity.

You want friends who get you? You have to practice getting them.
You want to feel seen? You have to sharpen your ability to see others.
You want people to listen when you talk about your feelings? You have to be brave enough to ask about theirs.

We talk about social skills as if they’re a performance; here they’re reframed as a mutual exchange. You can almost feel the reader FOMO kick in: If I don’t learn to do this, how many deep connections am I quietly missing out on?

The Social Skill Everyone Underestimates

When the teacher asks, “What social skill do people underestimate?” Sarah answers with something we rarely put into words: facial expressions.

Her grandmother, she explains, is Spanish — “and in Spain, we have a very hard facial language.” Sometimes Sarah is interested and engaged, but her face looks serious or even angry. People misread her.

“I can be very interested about a person,” she says, “but I just look at the person very bad and they say, ‘Are you angry?’”

The teacher laughs, imagining her own husband’s serious face. Then she broadens the idea: facial expressions and body language can either invite people in or shut them out. Arms crossed, eyes elsewhere, body turned away — all of that says, Don’t come closer, even if our words say, Tell me everything.

We don’t think of this as a “skill” because it’s unconscious. Yet, as soon as someone puts language to it, you can’t unsee it.

Can You Practice Empathy Like Maths?

The teacher poses a question that sounds like a thought experiment:

“Can you practice empathy the same way you practice math?”

Sarah laughs. “I’m not very good at maths,” she admits, “I think I’m better in empathy.”

But as she talks, it becomes clear that empathy is not effortless either. There’s a classmate in her college — “very intelligent but very slow” — who frustrates her. The class is competitive, the pace is demanding, and sometimes she finds herself thinking, Why are you like that? Other days, she feels more patient and understanding.

“I learn every day to be empathic,” she says. “Sometimes it’s easy, sometimes I think, ‘It’s too easy to be like that’… and sometimes I say, ‘You want to be like you are.’”

This is empathy in the real world — not a perfect halo, but a muscle she’s trying to build. Some days it flexes, some days it fails, but the intention is there.

The teacher agrees: yes, we can practice empathy, but life gives us the problems — like surprise tests — not the worksheets. Someone cries in your office: do you offer tea… or do you offer to listen?

Fighting or Talking Like Grown-Ups

When the conversation turns to conflict, Sarah is clear about her preference:

“Sometimes it’s easier to speak about the situation than fight about it,” she says. “It’s more adult to speak about what you think and what you feel.”

Not all her friends agree. Some “prefer fights.” She prefers calm. “We can speak,” she says simply.

It’s a small sentence that carries a big shift: from automatic reaction to deliberate response, from raised voices to raised self-awareness. It’s also a reminder that social skills aren’t just about making friends — they’re about staying friends when things get messy.

The Magic of Genuine Listening

Perhaps the most quietly powerful moment comes when they unpack what “genuine listening” does to a person.

The teacher paints the contrast: imagine you’re sharing your feelings and your friend is looking at their phone, eyes half on you and half on something else. Now imagine the same scene, but they’re fully present — listening, asking follow-up questions, trying to understand.

Sarah sums it up in one sentence:

“You feel respect,” she says. “You think, ‘Oh, this person is very interested in me and what I speak about.’ You are more confident. You think, ‘It’s interesting what I mean.’”

Listening doesn’t just transfer information; it builds identity. It quietly tells the other person, Your story is worth airtime. For a teenager navigating grades, trips, and surprise verb tests, that might be the difference between shrinking and growing.

Meerkats, Macarenas, and Invisible Days

Because social skills don’t always have to be serious, the lesson shifts into a series of playful “what if” questions — the kind that sound silly, but reveal something true.

If you greeted people with a dance move instead of “hello,” what would you choose?
Sarah chooses the Macarena.

“It’s very funny and all the people know this dance,” she says. “The person I am talking to can dance with me.”

It’s a surprisingly brilliant social strategy: choose a ritual everyone can join. No one has to be cool. Everyone just has to remember where to put their hands next.

If you could have a talking pet as your social coach, which would you pick?
Sarah picks a meerkat — discovered mid-lesson via frantic Googling and WhatsApp pictures.

“It’s a funny, cute animal,” she explains, “and I think it can be very kind.”

Meerkats, as her teacher notes, live in groups. They don’t like to be alone. In other words, her ideal social coach is small, alert, communal, and perpetually looking out for danger on the horizon. Not a bad metaphor for the friend who warns you before you overshare in the wrong group chat.

If your project partner was a sleeping sloth, what social skill would you need?
“Patience,” she answers. “To be calm… and to understand how they function.”

She’s essentially describing the art of working with any slow-moving colleague, roommate, or sibling: adjust your expectations, breathe, and try to understand how their pace shapes their world.

And then there’s the invisible-day scenario:

If you suddenly became invisible for a day, what social skill would you need most?
Sarah decides she would need kindness, and a very clear introduction:

“Hello, I am Sarah. I am very funny and I want to speak with you. I am not a ghost. I am just invisible for a day.”

You can almost see the scene: snow outside, an invisible teen nervously announcing her presence, trying to make strangers feel at ease. It’s ridiculous and oddly moving at the same time — because haven’t we all felt invisible at some point, longing for someone to acknowledge us?

One Social Skill for the Week Ahead

At the end of the lesson, the teacher asks a deceptively simple question:

“What is one social skill you want to practice this week?”

Sarah chooses empathy — specifically, empathy for the slow classmate in her very demanding school.

She knows he has difficulties. She knows the system is hard. She knows her frustration is real. But she also knows she wants to be better than her worst impulse.

“Sometimes I am empathic with him,” she admits. “Sometimes I am just frustrated.”
This week, she decides, she wants to practice the first one more.

It’s a gentle, practical form of “homework” — one that lingers long after the lesson ends. You can almost feel it nudging you, too:

If you had to pick one social skill to consciously practice this week, what would it be? And who would feel the difference first?

Creating Our Own Summer

Outside, Sara’s world is heading for a cold winter. –6°C, snow on Sunday, a week-long trip to Germany with even more snow promised.

Inside this one hour, though, there’s warmth: shared stories, new words, mutual laughter, honest admissions, a tiny Macarena dance imagined through a screen. There’s the kind of emotional climate we all crave — not perfect, not polished, but kind, curious, and brave enough to ask better questions.

We don’t always get to choose the weather, or the season, or the surprise evaluations that drop onto our desks. But we do get to choose how we speak, how we listen, how we look at each other, and how we make strangers feel that maybe — just maybe — they’re one conversation away from becoming a friend.

Call it social etiquette, call it emotional intelligence, call it “skills” if you must. In the end, it’s really about this: in a world that can feel cold, you and I have the power to create our own kind of summer — one conversation, one compliment, one small act of kindness at a time.

So as you step back into your day, ask yourself:

What season of life am I in — and what kind of climate am I creating for the people around me?