How I Became Famous (In Some Circles Anyway)

During my first senior year at BYU, my roommates introduced me to a little gem called the 100 Hour Board. For those of you unacquainted with the Board, it is an anonymously submitted and anonymously answered online Q&A forum run by BYU students for BYU students. Any curious person can submit a question to the Board and in 100 hours they will receive an answer. Simple as that. Check it out -- it's fun to read.

I read the Board for a while before I started submitting questions of my own. Soon enough, though, I, too, got the itch and began asking questions. On January 12, 2004, I asked a question which on the surface seemed innocent enough, but which may now very well be considered legend in the archives of the 100 Hour Board. Here is what I asked:

Dear 100 Hour Board,
How many stairs are there on campus, both inside and outside the buildings?

On January 13, my roommate, Heather, gave her senior violin performance recital. We roommates all went, as did a few friends from our current ward and our previous ward. Among Heather's supporters was Ryan and his wife, Amy. Ryan (aka "Thor") was a writer for the 100 Hour Board. During a conversation before the recital started, I told him that I had just submitted a question to the Board. He was interested and asked what question it was I had asked. I was hesitant to say because I was afraid of feeling stupid. 100 Hour Board writers, though they generally respond to most questions sincerely, have a tendency to just laugh off others. The nice thing about asking a question anonymously is that if your question is laughed off, you can pretend you weren't in any way involved and move on with your life. But I was cornered, and Ryan's a nice guy, so I told him that I'd asked the question about how many stairs there were on campus.

"That was you?!" he said. "Man, they are totally taking that question seriously!"

Apparently they had decided to not just laugh it off. All the writers had divvied up buildings and sections of campus and everyone was counting. I wrote in my journal, "This is hilarious, I tell you. I feel so strangely important."

It took them just over two weeks to post my answer, which was understandable, given the relative enormity of the question. It was posted on January 28 in the form of a lengthy table that listed the location of the stairs, how many stairs, and a running total. All told, there are 40,500 stairs on the BYU campus, give or take a thousand or two. You can see the totals here (scroll down to the bottom to see the table).

It was great fun to be so anonymously popular! Over time, my question has gained quite the reputation. After searching through their archives, I've counted 13 separate references to the stair question, though there are likely several more, though subtle, mentionings. It's true that some readers and writers of the 100 Hour Board found this question to be weird, labor and time intensive, a pain to answer, stupid, and just plain difficult. Others, in keeping with the spirit of the question (or whathaveyou), have tried to make sure the counting continues as new buildings are erected.

Well, there you go. I've thrown my anonymity out the window and rightfully claimed the stair question as my own. Who knew stairs could be so interesting?

PS: In honor of the fact that my brother just finished creating a pretty neat website about chairs and their "chairness" for a class project, and since stair and chair rhyme, I thought I'd advertise his site here. It's an amusing little project, so pull up a chair of your own (if you're not already sitting in one), and enjoy!