Event System: PointerEnter (GameObject) is registered slightly above gameObject?

Unity Engine
1

For the past couple of hours, I’ve been trying to figure out why mousing over a gameObject (not a UI object, a 3D object or ‘empty’ object) only works for a split second.
I finally realized what was going wrong when I slowly moved the mouse into it until it registered the mouse and played a small animation. The location that it registers the ‘PointerEnter’ event is slightly higher in the y-axis than the actual object. High enough that comfortably hovering is not registered, low enough that mousing over ‘seems to work’.

For some clarity, I’m mostly using the native inspector aspects to add this event. I added an Event Trigger to the game object in question.
Of note, the “Event System” is in a different location, but the documentation suggested this would be ok.

Final note: Why not post bug?
I don’t believe this is a bug, I believe I’m doing something wrong, but can’t find the answer via searching (will continue to look and update if I find it).

2

Ok, I think I figured out the above problem. I had, out of desperation, added a box collider to the empty parent.
Now I’ve run into an even nastier problem.

As a reminder, mostly all I’m doing is having basic shapes do basic things (appear, grow, rotate, etc). As mentioned before I have something setup so that when the mouse hovers over it it should change color… but now it simply vanishes from the scene. It still exists in the hierarchy but does not show visually in either the game window nor the scene window.

I’ve gone through all the changes since it worked, but as of yet cannot figure out what changed to make it completely vanish…