*Insurance- coverage by contract whereby one party undertakes to indemnify or guarentee another against loss by a specified contingency or peril.
*In other words, insurance is a contract that says that you have to pay a certain amout every month, in case you get in a tragedy that needs to be paid for.
*Lapsed- to go out of existence, cease to exist
Definitions from: http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary
When Langston Hughes said that the
boy's "insurance lapsed the other day" he ment
that the boy never paid his insurance
(which means he didn't have enough money to pay
the insurance man). After
a while of not paying insurance, his insurance shut down
and he was left with no coverage.
(my definition of the passage)