hitTest freakout... help needed

Hello Good People of the Kirupa Forum,
I’m trying to set up a drop down menu that has a limited hitArea. I need the menu sub options to go away (and an animation to reset) after the user rolls out of the hit Area. I’ve got the hitArea set up, but it won’t go away on rollOut. It only goes away if you roll back ON to the menu option from the TOP of the menu. It feels like a it’s a syntax problem, but I’ve tried many permutations that didn’t work and can’t find an example of this issue anywhere else. Please help!

see attached .fla for more details. (roll over “design”, the hit area will pop up as a rectangle to aid with the problem illustration, roll back over "design from the top of it to reset the sliding menu, otherwise it won’t reset:puzzled:).

Thanks in advance.