I don’t know why George invited me to shoot skeet. Because I was so unlikely? Vegetarian, liberal -- he probably didn't expect me to enjoy firing a shotgun. On an impish whim I accepted and planned to prove him wrong.

I had once shot a few rounds with a 9-gauge handgun at a firing range in Baltimore, puncturing the groin of my paper “thug” target. I felt very tough afterwards and wolfed down a Checkers cheeseburger from the drive-through. That was the extent of my gun-handling experience, as well as my last red-meat experience.

We rented two over-and-under 12-gauge shotguns. We donned big plastic safety goggles, just like junior high chemistry lab, and earplugs. We slung pouches around our waists to hold two boxes of shells. We said we’d pull our own, meaning we would not require the services of the sullen teenager who trailed us, sucking a cigarette, to our assigned slot. I was much relieved. If I was to be humiliatingly bad, let it not be in front of a stranger, especially a male stranger who would surely attribute my failure to the general helplessness and ineptitude of women.

Skeet shooting is very orderly. Stations are set around the radius of a semicircle, and a final station is at the center point. The clay targets are fired from houses at the ends of the semicircle, high house on the left, low house on the right. Each shooter takes a turn, then the group moves to the next station. At most stations, the shooter takes four shots: one clay from the high house, one from the low, and a double, in which a high and a low are fired simultaneously and the shooter attempts to hit both.

Step forward onto the concrete slab. Do not step past the black painted line. Unlock the gun, snap the barrels open, and load a shell in each. Feel the heavy click as the barrels lock back into place. Take a solid stance. (Mine always had a little too much of the frontier in it; they called me Annie Oakley.) Call "Pull." The bright orange clay arcs across the sky; squeeze the trigger, feel the kick, see the dust floating down from the shattering clay. Call "Pull" and shoot again. Unlock the gun and crack it open, ejecting the hot shells from the smoking barrels.

Smell the gunpowder on your hands and jacket while you await your next turn. Once, I saw a deer far back along the treeline.

If your worldview involves a male/female, Mars/Venus paradigm, you'll think I’m on the wrong team for shotgun sports. But if you know about the right brain and the left brain, you'll see that skeet uses primarily the right brain. That is why I like it. You cannot think linearly or logically about shooting; you will never hit a thing. When the clay is fired, you must apprehend the spatial situation at once, wordlessly, and at the same time, shoot.

If you ask me what I’m thinking about when I shoot, the answer is Nothing. My mind is empty. It's the Zen of skeet.