By Kyle Campbell

I was 12 years old once.

I don't remember everything about it, and I suppose there wasn't much to remember. The life of a 12-year-old is routine - go to school, do your chores, play, do your homework, and repeat. Twelve-year-olds don't generally form lasting friendships, and very rarely achieve their dreams, if they even have dreams yet. It is frightening to me, then, to think that my life could have ended at 12.

Kyle Campbell

I've accomplished much of what I set out to accomplish as a college student. I've lived nearly 20 happy years now, and I hope to live several scores more. And now that I am what most people would consider an adult, I have a pretty decent chance at that. Aside from early disease, an unfortunate accident, or a random act of violence, there is little likely to prevent me from living a few more decades. But it wasn't always that way, because I was 12 years old once.

I was around that age one Halloween, one of the first that I went trick-or-treating unaccompanied by adults. My parents were worried, of course, as all parents are after hearing incessant news reports about child abductions just before sending their children off to accept candy from strangers. I heeded all of their warnings to stay in a group and call for help if I felt unsafe, but I also grabbed a knife. That made sense to me at the time; I wanted to be able to defend myself. The evening went by without incident, and it wasn't until I came home and emptied my candy bag that my parents saw what I was carrying. The physical discipline I was used to from my mom was replaced by hysteria: "Don't you realize you could have been killed?"" she yelled. I didn't realize that. And neither did Tamir Rice.

I shudder involuntarily reading the commentary on Tamir's death. "He looked older than twelve, " they say. So did I. "He was carrying a toy that looked like a real gun," they argue. I was carrying an actual weapon. That such harmless intentions can be so easily construed as threating reminds me of our sobering reality - that for black Americans, childhood and adolescence are not just experienced; they are survived.

I was always respectful on the several occasions I was stopped by the police for walking in my own neighborhood during the day. I told the officers where I lived, what I was doing, and they let me go. It never occurred to me that it was wrong that my neighbors called the police to report a child taking a walk. My white friends would always remark on how unlucky I was, and I believed them. We all wore the same baggy jeans, tennis shoes, and hoodies. I didn't know that my skin was the missing piece of a criminal's uniform. But I was always respectful - and that seemed to be the key. I remained respectful even as I grew, as I learned about police brutality and race and the realities of black America. I remain respectful toward those who see the words "black lives matter" as a threat. I do this partially because I was raised to respect everyone, and because I know that not all cops are bad people, even if American police culture does its best to make them that way. But it's mostly a defense mechanism. As a white woman chooses to cross the street rather than walk past me on the sidewalk, so I choose to say "no sir" when asked without reason if I have drugs on me. I'm not a child anymore, so I know to be respectful to survive.

Yet I still carry a metaphorical knife with me on occasion. I take walks late at night on campus to clear my head, knowing very well that if there is a robbery in the area, I will fit the description. I still drive faster than the speed limit, no matter how many minor traffic stops I have seen escalate into violence. It could be typical college-student recklessness. It could be that I'm longing for an innocence I was never granted. It could be that making it through my most dangerous years has made me feel invincible. But I know I'm not. Among the many black faces six feet below the earth, their expressions still hoping for the benefit of the doubt, the fact mine is not represented is a coincidence. When I have nightmares about Tamir Rice lying in the street for four minutes with no medical attention, no one to talk to, no understanding of why he is dying, sometimes I am Tamir. But in even worse dreams, I'm one of the police officers, standing over my own dying body.

It reminds me of a day I stood over a baby snake in my driveway, one I knew was not venomous, but petrified me just the same. "Don't worry," my dad said, "he's even more afraid of you than you are of him."

Then he killed him anyway.

Kyle Campbell is a student at the University of Alabama and state president of the Alabama College Democrats.