For all those who fear awkward moments, take a page from Tig Notaro's book and just roll with it.
When the comedian — who stars in the semiautobiographical Amazon series One Mississippi — made her Late Show With Stephen Colbert debut last week, she played it cool, bonding with the host over their Southern roots.
Notaro revealed she had inadvertently been making up Southernisms and using them on her podcast, Professor Blastoff. As she learned on-air, it turns out that "tump" is not a word meaning to knock something over.
"I had been dropping 'tump' all around," she said. "And I found out on the air in front of hundreds of listeners that wuddn't a word" ("Wuddn't" being a perfect callback to one of her favorite Southern-isms).
Notaro has always been someone who knows how to add a little humor to moments that may not actually seem funny. In 2012, Notaro made headlines when she announced during a live set that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer. Her opening line: "Good evening. Hello. I have cancer. How are you?"
On the Late Show, she managed to infuse what could have been an uneasy moment with a dose of humor. After she and Colbert each misspoke about where the other was from, the host apologized for things getting awkward.
"Well, neither of us enjoy awkwardness," Notaro said ironically. "So let's get out of this moment immediately." With a shake of her head, a sigh of relief and a gavel-like hit of her coffee mug to the desk, things were back to normal.
Even better, Notaro just taught us the perfect fix for any awkwardness during small talk: Just make 'em laugh.
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