When Magic Johnson announced during a press conference in 1991 that he’d acquired HIV, Masonia Traylor, 34, was only four-years-old. And in 1995, when the first HIV “cocktail,” a combination of antiretroviral drugs used to suppress the replication of HIV in the body, became widely available for use, Traylor was eight. The gravity of Johnson’s diagnosis and the impact it would have around the globe at the height of the epidemic couldn’t have been further off eight-year-old Traylor’s radar. HIV wasn’t a part of her world as a child growing up in Atlanta, and this would remain unchanged well into her early 20s until it did.

On a lunch break from work, Traylor recalls seeing a woman wearing a t-shirt that read on the front, “I Have HIV.” Traylor says she was shocked and figured if the “woman was bold enough to wear that I could ask her if she had HIV.”

Traylor says the woman chuckled and said, “Girl, no. Read the back.” The woman turned around to reveal the text written on the back of her t-shirt: “If only it was that easy to tell. Get tested.”