Absolute Positioning bug in Internet Explorer

I've struggled with this headache for a short while now: An absolute positioned element just would not appear when loading the webpage in internet explorer 8 (although I think due to some compatibility mode, it emulates 5.5 or 6.0). No guides on the internet seemed to help out, but when I tried using the "Developer Tools" I found that disabling the "position:absolute" property and then reenabling it caused the item to be properly drawn.
What I ended up with was this little script, which looks and sounds rather moronic but surely works:

<script>
      $('.myDiv').css('position','relative');
      $('.myDiv').css('position','absolute');
</script >