I did as you say and it works, but since the validation is in a repeat region, the page reloads and shows the error div on every product. I suppose the best thing for me to do is make the error message occur outside of the repeat region for the product that fails validation?
If you have a suggestion for some kind way to get a message to work inside the repeat region that holds the select list, I would appreciate it. I have attached the file that runs this. You can also view it here for now before I keep working on this: spring.php
Thanks for your help!