Songfacts®:

• This song was written by both Mark Hoppus and Tom DeLonge, and DeLonge sings the whole song. The song is about a guy saying he has a girlfriend that can be a great girlfriend sometimes, but other times can be very difficult ("She's a dove, she's a f--king nightmare").
• The lyrics, "Unpredictable it was my mistake to stay here," means he didn't know his girlfriend was like this. At the end of the chorus and during the interlude, Tom sings the line, "I need a girl that I can train." This means he wants his next girlfriend to be someone he can mold.
  
  DeLonge's actual girlfriend was not amused. "That's not about her," he told MTV News. "I got a lot of sh-- from her for that one."
  
  In a track-by-track commentary, he explained his reasoning behind the lyrics: "I remember writing the song thinking about my dog. You can train the dog to sit, to be quiet, to be a good dog. But you can't teach a girl to do anything. So I thought that'd be cool to write a song about... If only you had a girl that you could train like a dog, that'd be cool because then she could never make you mad, and she would never be a woman. And women are just a whole different species. So that song was written [like] 'As if...'" >>

  Suggestion credit:
  Doug - Las Vegas, NV, for above 2
• In the 2016 documentary Pursuit Of Tone, DeLonge said this started out as a collection of guitar riffs, including a nursery-rhyme-type riff that amplified the verse. "So we combined all the riffs and we created this big, kind of hello intro for the record that was our first really big record," he said. "And to this day, it's probably the best opener we've ever had."
• A live version was released as a promo single for the band's 2000 live album, The Mark, Tom, and Travis Show (The Enema Strikes Back!).