Running 1.3.8a at racingriverwebs.com/memorialpto

Searching the boards I found a tutorial on making options required that says:
a. add an attribute that is Display-Only (ie: a color swatch that says "Please Select a Color").
b. Make it default

I have 5 options for this race sign up - two of them are text - name and age. Works fine for the dropdown list options, but when I tried to do this for the text options I get an error. How can I make the text options required?