the age old question - can girls and boys be friends?

since the dawn of time...people have never been able to comprehend the fact a girl and a boy can be just friends...no!!!!!!!!!! they have to be dating...we HAVE TO ship them together...

no but seriously, imagine it:

you are in a HETERO!!! relationship, your partner has a friend of the opposite gender.

do you 

A. be a good partner, who has trust in their S/O that they won't cheat on you, and not bat an eye at the fact your S/O has a friend of the other gender

or do you

B. be controlling, and not trusting of your partner, and force them to stop being friends with their friend, because you are insecure. 

if you choose A, you are a good person!!! Yayyy!!!!!!
if you choose B, it might be time to do some self reflection.

anyways, for some reason some people cant grasp the concept of a girl and a boy being friends, as someone who had a lot of male friends when i was younger it was SO infuriating to hear comments about our friendship. god forbid i dont have a crush on every single man i meet.

maybe its a maturity thing? maybe its the way society is? will we even know? probably not. will it ever end? prolly not 

but this still begs the question, can boys and girls be JUST friends. well obviously yes, but really, why CANT people accept this? i mean, as of right now i have no male friends (irl), so maybe im rusty on this subject. but if i cast my mind back to 6th grade, when i was friends with this boy who everyone was convinced was, or was going to be, my boyfriend it was INFURIATING. after school one day someone saw me give him my phone number. normal friend thing you may be thinking but you are WRONG!!!! if it was a girl, no one would have batted an eye (heteronormativity) but because it was a boy, who i'd already been hanging out with prior to that, HE MUSTVE BEEN MY BOYFRIEND!!!! turns out he WANTED a boyfriend.

but people (mostly other guys in my class) kept saying stuff, "shipping" us together, which was so annoying, and i know im starting to seem a little repetitive so i'll talk about something else.

robin buckley and will byers, a canonically lesbian character and a canonically gay character, one who is 19, and one who is 16. you would think no one would ship them together right? but no, because a boy and a girl are nice to each other, and friends, they must be shipped together. why you may be asking? because girls and boys cant possibly be just friends! there must be some hidden feelings somewhere!!!

so, to answer the question, according to society, NO boys and girls cant be friends.

according to me, and other normal people? yes they can be.

also why is every parent convinced that if a boy and a girl who are just friends have a sleepover something weird is going to happen? let kids be kids.