Ben
That did as you said it would but I'm not quite getting the effect I'm
after.
The autocomplete is causing it to have problems. When I type "B" it
autocompletes "Base" there for the result I get are only items that
begin with "Base" furthermore when I press the down arrow to get to
the item I want It makes it so the list only contains items that begin
with the first item of the list. Example

preschool
prealgebra
prepare
president

If I type in "pre" it might show the above results but when I press
the down arrow to try to get to "prepare" as soon as it sees
"preschool" it narrows the list down to things that only begin with
"preschool".

I'm stumped on this and I don't really know if I'm trying for an
unreachable goal. but if you have any other ideas I would appreciate
them.