"In the Water, Everything Cuts You..."

The other night I had a dream that I was swimming in the lake, near the lakeshore by the student union. And as I was swimming, I came upon this submerged circular opening, like an underwater manhole or something.

And I put out my hand and took hold of the edge of the manhole; only it was extremely sharp and I realized that I had cut my fingers on it, sliced into them quite deeply in fact. And blood was welling out of my fingers underwater like a crimson cloud. Though strangely I felt no pain.

Then I noticed a sign posted underwater next to the manhole, and it said:

WARNING!
In the Water
Everything Cuts You
And You Cut Everything

And I wondered what this was about, though it was certainly true that the sharp edge of the underwater manhole had cut my fingers.

And then it came to me, as if in a word of knowledge, that this underwater manhole had been placed there by some progressive social-reformer do-gooders, with the aim of convincing you that everything underwater was a sharp and dangerous place that would cut you, and that you were also dangerous because you would cut anything you touched underwater, and that the only solution was to "get underwater" by entering in through the manhole.

Only then it also came to me that some people had been objecting that actually many things underwater don't cut you, and that most of the time you don't cut things yourself underwater simply by touching them. Also it struck me as strange that one should have to enter the manhole to "get underwater" when in fact anyone who was anywhere in the vicinity of the manhole was already underwater; and the chief danger of getting cut came from unwittingly grasping the edge of the manhole. But I guess the do-gooders thought they would see who they could sucker into their program of underwater social uplift.

And then I woke up.