ActionScript 1/2 :: Adding Tooltip Functionality To MovieClip?

So I've been trying to add tooltip functionality, but I'm getting some strange behavior. e.g. duplicate clips appearing, clip not loading completely, clip not fading in correctly.

Goal: Tooltip box that quickly fades in after a short delay. Must resize to accomodate varying number of lines and line lenghts.

Structure: The tooltip movieclip holds three other clips in this layer order:
1) clip with a texbox
2) clip with the yellow box background
3) clip with a black box for the border (this box is 2 pixels larger than the box background, effectively leaving a 1 pixel border.)

These clips exist transparent on a timeline for about a half second, then start to fade in to full opacity by the last frame. So, the button code consists of assigning some text to a variable, then calling a function to make the tooltip visible via rollOver, and a hide function on rollOut. The idea is:

RollOver
1) use startDrag to place the clip by the mouse
2) Assign the text to the text box
3) Resize the background and border to match the size of the current text
4) Make the tooltip clip _visible = true
5) Play the tooltip clip, causing the delay and then fade in. (stop at last frame)

RollOut
1) make tooltip clip _visible = false
2) gotoAndStop(1); (reset clip)

Now for the problems:
1) Improper (loading?)
Upon opening the flash file, If I do anything that causes the tooltip move to stop playing, or if the showTooltip() function get called before that playback is done, the clip will no longer play. And it will be stuck at whatever frame it was on at the time of interrupt everytime the tooltip is shown thereafter.

2) Duplicate clips
If my main timeline has more than one frame, and extra instance of the tooltip appears from 'somewhere' - which is odd because there is only one tooltip movieclip and it's there from the begining.

3) Fade not working
The setting of the box size seems to be somehow interfering with the alpha of the parent clip. I've had to resort to using _visible on the tooltip timeline to control the delayed visibility of the box. (Removal of the box sizing causes the clip to fade properly.)

Relevant code:
Main timeline
startDrag("_root.tooltip", true); tooltip._visible = false;
Tooltip clip
onClipEvent(load) {
function showTooltip() {
[Code] .....