A couple of weeks later, I emailed the governor's office to confirm that his much-discussed eyewear is used primarily for reading. Instead of a simple "yes," "no," or "not exactly," I received an email saying Perry would phone me himself to chat about "the details on the eye stuff."

And chat he did. On July 25, en route home from the Republican Governors Association's three-day confab in Aspen, Perry spent a generous 15 minutes or more walking me through his ophthalmological history—the gist of which really should be conveyed more or less verbatim:

"In 1967, when I was a young senior in high school, I was hit in the eye with a rock thrown across a football field by my best friend." The offending projectile "was a smooth stone, the size between a 50-cent piece and a silver dollar. It hit me directly in the left eye. I lost complete vision in that eye."

"Living where we lived, I didn't have access to an ophthalmologist for a period of time. Long story short, Michelle: My eye miraculously was healed. I don't know why. My left eye had filled with blood. I lost complete vision. And the eyesight came back after a period of time." He clarifies: "We're talking about over the course of a month or so."

Eventually, Perry received a proper eye exam. "I think an ophthalmologist took a look and said, 'Your vision's fine.' And so I went on about my life. I went to school. I got a contract with the United States Air Force to fly planes. Obviously, an eye exam is one of the most rigorous parts of that type of physical exam. My eyesight was 20/20." In all his flyboy days, Perry assures me, "there was never, ever any ophthalmologist or eye exam that ever questioned anything about my eyesight."

"So I go on through life. I hit my 40s, which is when eyesight starts to deteriorate. I never really had any deterioration. Then in my mid 50s—around 2004 or 2005—I start noticing that I needed some 1.25 or 1.5 reading glasses in the evening, like if I'm reading the Bible or a little something before I go to bed. Then I used the little ones you get at Wal-Mart." He chuckles. "Being a very frugal fellow, I would buy three for $10 at Wal-Mart. I'd leave them laying around."

Fast-forward to shortly after the 2012 presidential election. One night, sitting in his office at the state Capitol, the governor noticed that some air vents running along the wall no longer looked straight to him. "So I did a little self-exam and figured out that in my left eye there was some distortion in my vision. I went to see an ophthalmologist. She said, 'You know what, I'm going to send you to a retina expert. I'm seeing some things in here that are troubling.' "

And so off Perry went to Austin's Dr. Armie Harper. "He diagnosed me with what is referred to as pre-retinal fibrosis. For a layman, what that is—that injury that occurred 45 years ago was starting to manifest itself." Unlike the smooth, concave curve of a normal retina, explains Perry, "mine went up and then dipped down and went back up. It looked like somebody had pushed the retina in. What it is, it was the scar tissue that had never been readily visible from an eye exam. He said, 'It's like Saran wrap, when you heat it and it crinkles up. That's what's happening to your retina. There are two ways to deal with this. Try to correct it with glasses. Or have surgery.' "