Non firing default option

I need to create several jump menus on a site I'm working on and each needs to have a default entry that says "Select..." or something similar. Since Drupal menus require a valid path in each link I have thought to substitute a modified submission handler via hook_form_alter but I've been having issues because of the generation of multiple instances of the block. I've added a Drupal path to the front page of the site but don't really want the user to be accidentally redirected to the front page

Is there any consideration being given to adding a displayed default or enabling a configuration parameter which could intercept the firing of the first menu item and suppress the firing?
I really like the maintainability of using system menus and don't want to craft jump menus in HTML.
The folks doing the maintenance work may or may not be familiar with HTML.

Any thoughts/ assistance is appreciated
Ref - http://drupal.org/node/1454616

function *****_hacks_form_submit_alter($form, &$form_state, $form_id) {
 
	if($form_id == "jump_quickly_form") {

		$form['jump_quickly_form']['#submit'][0] = array('*****_hacks_jump_quickly_form_submit');
		return $form;
	}
 }
/**
 * REVISED Form submit callback for the jump form.
 *
 * @param array $form
 * @param array $form_state
 */
function *****_hacks_jump_quickly_form_submit($form, &$form_state) {
  if (!empty($form_state['values']['jump_goto'])) {
    if ($form_state['values']['jump_goto'] = 'node/162') {
  	
    } else {
  	  $fragment = explode('#', $form_state['values']['jump_goto']);
      if (isset($fragment[1])) {
        drupal_goto($fragment[0], NULL, $fragment[1]);
      }
      else {
        drupal_goto($form_state['values']['jump_goto']);
      }
    }
  }
}