What Happened to Kenneka Jenkins
I’m sure you’ve heard about it all over the inter-news (news and internet pushed together. I’m so clever!) about a young woman who was found dead in a freezer. Her name is Kenneka Jenkins and she was 19 years old, hanging out with her girls like so many of us have done. There were several people in the hotel room with her and no one knows how she died, nor how her body ended up in the freezer at the Crowne Plaza Hotel. Internet sleuths have been spending hours dissecting the evidence that is available to them. There was a video that was live broadcast on Facebook the night she died. Supposedly you can hear a young woman in the background yelling and asking for help while others in the room are smoking, drinking, and ultimately partying. There have been comments from some of those involved that were posted on Facebook that looked very incriminating.
For the sake of the investigation, it appears all the alleged Facebook pages have been deactivated, as well as posts of the party participants’ phone numbers and addresses. I don’t know if her friends were involved or set her up, but these are the rumors that are circulating on the net. I hate that this has happened to this young woman, and what’s worse, her mother is having to deal with not knowing what happened. All she knows is that her baby went out with her “friends” and she didn’t come back. Friends are essential to life.
Why “Friends” Fail Friends
You can’t go through life as a happy individual and not have some type of friendship. They are essential to your success and, overall, just your well-being, as humans are social creatures. However, the wrong friendships can be detrimental to your growth and your health. I look at the young lady and just think to myself: for these to be her home girls, how could they let this happen? I know we are responsible for ourselves, and by no means do I absolve responsibility for self. What I will say is that in the event you falter, your friends are supposed to be there to back you up. They are to look out for you when you can’t look out for yourself — why? Because that’s what your friends do. So when I read that her friends didn’t know where she was, my face becomes ugly. (This means I’m trying to make sense of this in my head, but I keep getting the “does not compute” error response.)
This isn’t the first time we’ve heard about “friends” failing friends. Several weeks ago, we heard of a young girl who was at a “friends” sleepover and woke up to hot boiling water being poured on her. Thank goodness she recovered and is healing in a remarkable fashion, but the scars of what her “friends” did will always stick with her. Fake friends, or “frenemies,” have been around since the beginning of forever. Chalk it up to life, I guess, but are we giving our girls the tools to discern a fake friend from a real friend? Are we having this type of “talk”? We need to.
Learning to Spot a Fake Friend
I will have to say parents are key to helping us develop the skills needed to identify a good friend and maintain those good friendships. Some of us had parents who would look out for us. How many women had their mothers tell them to watch out for that so-called friend? Or, my favorite, from my grandmother: “She’s jealous.” I had a friend who had been my friend for years. My grandma would sing that same song all the time — “Watch out, she’s jealous of you.” I didn’t believe my grandmother. I couldn’t imagine anyone being jealous of me. In fact, I was jealous of her life and loved being in her home. As I grew up, I would notice her doing certain things that seemed a bit haterish, but I just chalked it up to her being her. When other family members came around, she would act like we weren’t best friends and would kind of treat me like an annoyance. (I will give it to her, I can be a handful.)
As I got older we grew apart, and many things that I thought were solid weren’t as solid as I believed them to be. Now, don’t get me wrong, she wasn’t a bad friend, but there was some room for improvement. Thankfully, I found my BFF Jessica at the age of 16, and I never heard my grandmother ever say anything bad about Jessica. (Which is pretty shocking, because my grandma talks about everyone!) I was lucky to have a mother and grandmother who could see things that I could not. As I grew older, I was able to spot the things a good friend does, versus the things someone does who isn’t really for you. There has to be a balance. The flip side is that sometimes your mother tells you not to be friends with women. How many have heard, “I don’t have any female friends. You can’t trust them”? Some women are more emotional, so at times they may get mad at things without logically walking through the issue and trying to figure out how to resolve it. This is why you have TV shows such as Love and Hip Hop showing that women can’t get along. We can. You just picked tons of super-emotional women and placed them in a room, while shaking the emotional hornet’s nest.
How to Teach Your Daughter What a Good Friend Looks Like
Women and men can both be untrustworthy. That’s not relegated to one gender, regardless of what your bitter friends tell you. Which leads me to my main point: as mothers to young girls, how do you teach them what is a good friend and a healthy friendship? Here are a few talking points that would be helpful to get that conversation started.
- Friends don’t let friends fail at life. You messed up. You made a mistake. You hate yourself, you wish you were dead, and every other low thought you’re having is running through your head. Your good friends will give you that additional support you need. When you thought you couldn’t do it, they knew you could. When you thought you failed, they did not. Sometimes a good friend can see the things you cannot see. Friends support you through thick and thin, but that doesn’t mean they won’t tell you the hard, cold truth — which reminds me…
- Friends tell their friends the truth, even if it hurts. Some of you ladies don’t have good friends — why? Because you could go to the club looking horrible, and your so-called friends didn’t say anything to you. If your girl is looking bad, say it to her. If she pushes back on your constructive critique, you did your obligatory job of telling your friend she looked bad, but she was going to do whatever she wanted to do anyway. Seriously, friends give you the truth. You might not agree with it, or like it, but they refuse to lie to you just because they’re afraid of how you’ll feel. They would rather see you succeed than be ridiculed unnecessarily or hurt by someone else.
- Friends don’t leave friends behind. If I came with my friends, I left with my friends. If I was gone too long because a guy was trying to have a conversation with me, my friends came by to check up on me or waited for the “help me” sign. When we were in Vegas, my friend Gigi and I were having a ball. We were drinking, and realized that to avoid any issues, we needed a code word for when we needed to get out of dodge because a situation might get a bit hairy. (Plus, I’m short, so I get lost easily.) This one guy, who I noticed must have had way too much to drink, tried to get a little too close on the dance floor. I yelled our code word, and Gigi pulled me out and saved the night. Thanks, Gigi — you are the real MVP. Your friends should love you and not want anything to happen to you. Because they value you as a person and your overall friendship, they will protect you and look out for you.
- Friends don’t let friends date ugly dudes — you’re better than that, sis. (This is totally a “joke.” Wink wink.)
- Friends don’t maliciously hurt friends. Good friends get no pleasure or joy from seeing you in agony. When you are sad, they are there for you. When you are hurt, they help care for you. When you are lost, they help guide you. Your friends love you just like your partner would — you just can’t sleep with these people. (Or at least you shouldn’t; I wouldn’t recommend it.) A good friend will not want to hurt you, nor put you in situations that will hurt you. Anything else is uncivilized!
What are some tips you would share with your daughters on what to look for in a friend?