What was going on when I was born?

New York City residents live in co-ops, lofts and studios, but when the city's people sat down Tuesday to fill out the national census form they found no way to describe their peculiar living arrangements, for the questionnaire does not speak the city's language.

WASHINGTON, April 2 The White House, in an attempt to encourage Iranian authorities to take charge of the American hostages, promised today that the United States would show restraint toward Iran "in our words and actions" as long as progress was being made to resolve the 151-day crisis.

WASHINGTON, April 2 The Federal Reserve Board today imposed a uniform requirement that credit card issuers give card holders 30 days' notice of new repayment terms, but it suspended the stricter notification requirements imposed by a number of states.

Trackmen suddenly ended their strike against the Long Island Rail Road yesterday at the request of a Federal mediator and resumed talks with surprised officials of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

PHILADELPHIA, April 2 Despite defeats yesterday in Wisconsin and Kansas, Senator Edward M. Kennedy pushed vigorously into the crucial battleground of Pennsylvania today, seeking an upset victory that his own strategists say he must achieve to keep alive his shrinking hopes of blocking President Carter's renomination.

WASHINGTON, April 2 The debate over whether to change or even to specify the roles under which the nation's intelligence services operate became more spirited today as a former Director of Central Intelligence and a Senator clashed over how good the good old days of the agency had been.

Both sides in the two-day strike by 33,000 New York subway and bus workers agreed yesterday to resume negotiations this morning. The agreement came shortly after Long Island Rail Road trackmen called off their strike. The L.I.R.R. trains resumed running today, just after midnight.

Squeezed by the Administration's antiinflation policies, several major banks raised their prime lending rates yesterday to a record 20 percent, making the cost of loans to the nation's leading businesses more expensive than it has been since the nation's early years.

TEHERAN, April 2 President Abolhassan Bani-Sadr said tonight that he had received a message from President Carter agreeing to an Iranian condition that the United States withhold threats and hostile statements in order to gain the transfer of the American Embassy hostages to Government control.

BOGOTA, Colombia, March 31 The Colombian Army is about to abandon its American-assisted efforts to curb shipments of marijuana from this country, the largest supplier to the United States.

MEXICO CITY, April 2 (AP) The United States Coast Guard and the Mexican Navy resumed the search today for Barton Isenberg, a Department of Energy official who along with a friend has been missing at sea in the Caribbean for 10 days. But both are presumed dead, authorities said.