“Why?” Laura asked. Her oldies — I mean “real music” — station had just played Elton John’s 1983 hit “I Guess That’s Why They Call it the Blues.”

“Why is sadness associated with the color blue? Why not call it the grays if it has to be associated with a color?”

Why indeed?

And why do we say a jealous person is green with envy? Or that a coward is yellow-bellied?

I understand red with anger — that’s the color the teacher’s face turned before she exploded at us — but why is a crummy gift exchange a white elephant?

Then there’s the phrase “black cat girlfriend,” referring to an aloof woman who is selectively affectionate, and the “golden retriever boyfriend,” the guy who’s fiercely loyal once he attaches to you.

And how, I asked Laura, were we able to color code any such characteristic before color was invented in 1964?

It’s true. Photographs and TV shows when I was a little kid are all black and white. Actually, the photographs and TV shows WERE in color. It’s just that back then, the world was black and white.

It made memorizing the colors of the rainbow easy — light gray, gray, more grayer, even grayer and so on, right down to dark gray.

Then in 1964, Harold J. Crayola invented color. I’m a little hazy on the details, but once he made colors, he molded them into something he called crayons.

At first, Mr. Crayola boxed up crayons in packages of eight, then 16. As color caught on, he kept inventing until he came up with 64 colors. For rich people, Mr. Crayola even produced 128 colors, with a crayon sharpener built into the box. I know because that’s what the rich kids in my kindergarten class had.

Big deal. Who needed umber or burnt sienna anyway?

“Neener, neener, Burton’s turning greener,” the rich kids taunted.

“I’m not green, I’m blue,” I snapped.

And that, I told Laura, was the birth of the blues.

Oddly, she wasn’t buying my explanation.

“The color blue is such a happy, bright color,” Laura said. “Blue skies, blue water. Gray skies are threatening, gloomy weather as opposed to a blue sky on a bright sunny day.”

But gray wasn’t included in my box of eight crayons. Mr. Crayola had used his crayons to color the rainbow. And Froot Loops.

But, if we must, we can consult with Wikipedia, that knower of all knowledge as written by anyone with access to a computer.

The term “blues” may have originated from British usage in the 1600s of the term “blue devils” when referring to “intense visual hallucinations,” according to Wikipedia.

Green goes back to ancient Greek medicine when bile was associated with negative feelings and sickness. The famous English playwright Billy Shakespeare later coined the phrase “green-eyed monster” in one of his productions.

Associating yellow with cowardice, Wikipedia says, could be because Judas Iscariot supposedly wore yellow, or it could come from the yellow bellies of skittish birds.

Legend has it that the king of Siam would gift sacred white elephants to courtiers he didn’t like because the upkeep on the sacred creatures would bankrupt the disfavored folk.

The most incredible thing about these origin stories is they all happened before Harold J. Crayola invented color. Mr. Crayola had to come up with colors to fit the phrases.

I told Laura that I know it’s true because fact is stranger than fiction.

“I was in the pink, just peachy,” Laura said. “Then you had to start talking a blue streak. Now I know why they call it the blues.”

“You’re welcome,” I said.

Color Cole’s world at burton.w.cole@gmail.com