need help with a threadbit template mod

[The Wise One]

i hope i got this in the right forum...

some of my users have been complaining about the tooltip popup when hovering over a thread title with the mouse. i decided to make this tooltip popup a user selectable choice since other users found it usefull.

i created a new profile field using a single selection dropdown menu with 2 options: "enable" and "disable". i also set "enable" to be default.

i then went into the threadbit template and added the necessary if conditional.

the mod works great except for one thing. even tho "enable" is set as the default option...tooltips are disabled until a user enters the usercp and disables the option, saves, and then enables the option again and saving.

any ideas why this would happen?

code is in the attachment.