Ok. I hope that title is clear enough.

So to start. I'm using the latest version of Zen Cart (1.3.9b) on a clean install to my private test server yadda yadda yadda. No mods installed but a lot of custom coding (no, I'm not altering core files).
I've looked through the faqs and searched the forum and I'm not seeing what I'm looking for. Now that the prelims are out of the way here's what I'm looking to do:

I've been coding up a site for a client that after having a fair share of it done came across the need for a shopping cart and such. Hence the install of Zen which I've salvaged (and am trying to continue to salvage) much of my old code because the client liked the site look and feel.

In this site I've developed a custom navigation column using javascript to do some sub menus and categories that auto hide and etc. Now what I'm in need of doing is to highlight the current page that I've someone is on, but since Zen Cart comes with a breadcrumb trail that I'd like to utilize, I don't want the links in my nav column to show different than the breadcrumbs. (Am I making sense?)

So my idea on this is to make a call from the breadcrumb code to highlight and deactive the current page/category link in my nav column rather than hacking together some code and taking the chance that my categories might end up showing differently. The problem is that I really don't know PHP.

So my is: Do the PHP wiz's of the forum feel this idea is worthwhile to try and piece together or should I come up with a different plan?