My husband grew up so poor he made poor kids look wealthy. There were days when there was no food in the house due to massive medical bills for another child. He was fairly neglected as well because of the medical issues pulling the parents' attention to the child who needed it the most.
He tells me that he spent most of his childhood taking things apart or figuring out how to make them out of nothing. He "borrowed" paper from school to make paper airplanes which he then climbed on the roof to see which design sailed best from his vantage point. His father sold office supplies, and he continually dismantled pens - some of which were meant for clients. And he broke the only mechanical toy he had, a gift he received as a little boy - the kind that buzzed around the bathtub. He promised his mom he wouldn't take it apart but couldn't help himself. He said he played with it for months after it was broken just so he wouldn't have to confess to his mother he broke it when he took it apart.
The point of all this history is to tell you that he is now a founding partner in his third startup, all of which were founded to solve some problem in a cutting edge technology. He still likes to see how things work and figure out a way to make it better or invent something completely new from what he's learned.
Maybe some behaviors are OCD-indicative, but do know that the impulse could be a driving inquisitiveness that, if nurtured and redirected, could spark a fruitful pursuit of learning and creating.
