BENTLEY's CREEPY PANTS
WHICH HAVE LEAD
TO THE CREATION
OF THE WORM INN
Bentley’s Personal Background
UWC: This question has been on my mind for a couple years so let me get on with it. What does Mrs. Christie think of this worm thing? How has she handled seeing her suburban backyard, garage, and maybe the kids’ bedrooms transformed into worm-a-palooza?
BC: LoL – good question!
Well, we don’t actually have a garage, and I haven’t QUITE gotten to the point of invading my kids’ bedrooms (although I DID convince my daughter to set up and keep her own small worm bin in her room for a period of time), but yes my wife has endured a lot!
To my face, she understandably expresses a fair amount of frustration. “Behind my back,” she seems to extoll the virtues of me pursuing my passions, and she seems very proud of me.
All things considered, she has been extraordinarily understanding. We live in a pretty small house in the suburbs, and my worm stuff takes up a lot of space.
She definitely has her limits (eg. I ended up having to dismantle a Worm Inn Mega that was sitting in one of our bathrooms – hahaha), but I still feel like I’m “getting away with murder” far more than the average hubby :-)
UWC: I think I remember a story about your father’s reaction when you decided to quit your job to pursue the worm business full-time. Can you describe that?
BC: Good memory, Steve! But it was worse than leaving a “job.” I was getting towards the end of a MSc (Masters of Science, up here in Canada) degree. My dad was at the time a university professor with a PhD (he is mostly retired now…still has the PhD – lol), so he took it pretty hard!
Amazingly, he recovered pretty quickly and actually became a very big supporter.
One other important detail to add here. This was back in the fall of 2005, and it wasn’t actually a “worm business” I quit school to pursue. My dad would likely have been much more understanding about that. It was an affiliate marketing business. It wasn’t until the next year that I started dabbling in “eco” websites. 2007 was when I really started working on Red Worm Composting. And spring of 2008 was when I actually started my own official “worm biz.”
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