What was going on when I was born?

THE elimination of $64 million in minimum state aid to 234 school districts, as called for in Governor Byrne's 1982 education budget, has teachers, administrators, school-board members and parents on the warpath. Their target is the Legislature, which has until June 30 to act on the budget and in which sentiment appears to be strong for restoration of all or part of the $64 million. The proposed $1.7 billion state education budget represents an increase of 6 percent over the $1.6 billion appropriated for the current fiscal year. It also represents a decrease of $9 million in compensatory aid and $20 million that school leaders say they had hoped to get in transportation costs. Compensatory aid consists principally of funds for teaching students in need of remedial work.

The Environmental Protection Agency will propose on Monday a change in clean air regulations that is intended to ease restrictions on new industrial development while continuing to protect against air pollution, Vice President Bush announced today. The regulatory change would affect the entire industrial area of the nation, about 17 percent of the nation's land mass, including the Northeast corridor, southern California and the industrial Middle West. Present clean air regulations severely impede industrial development in much of this area, and the proposed change would ease these restrictions without adding to air pollution, Administration officials contend. They also said that the revision could have a significant early effect in California by permitting, for example, more refining of domestic oil and the retooling of two General Motors Corporation plants in Van Nuys and South Gate to build smaller cars.

AFTER halting a 12-year influx of office buildings at a point at which they produce about 25 percent of its tax revenues, Greenwich is now seeking to halt construction in other communities, even those across state lines, whenever such development is perceived to be a threat to the Greenwich environment and its way of life. Last December, for example, in an effort to eliminate the possible side effects of office construction in the neighboring Town of Rye, Greenwich filed lawsuits against it and the developers, contending that office buildings planned by Citicorp and Largo London & Leeds, a development concern, would affect the environment in Connecticut. This may be the first time that a municipality has tried to block development across state lines. Greenwich was joined in the lawsuit by the adjacent village of Harrison, where Supervisor John Passidomo said that the failure of Rye and Westchester County to provide a new road in order to resolve Harrison's traffic problems in connection with the project ''left us no choice.''

In 1975, Secretary of Defense James R. Schlesinger called his a ''turnaround defense budget'' (critics called it ''the camel's nose''). Last week, Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger called his ''rearming America.'' Only the label has changed.

DIX HILLS ''THERE'S no mystery about what the problems are,'' said Francis S. Gabreski, reflecting on the difficulties that forced him out of his job as president of the Long Island Rail Road. ''By 1984 or 1985,'' he said, ''there should be a tremendous improvement in service with the opening of the West Side storage yard near Penn Station. But between now and then there will be the same kinds of ups and downs that we've been having because there is no flexibility in the system.'' Two weeks ago, the 62-year-old Mr. Gabreski - a former ace fighter pilot - became the third of six presidents in the last 25 years to be ousted by the railroad because of service problems. Named as his temporary replacement, for a period of two months, was Daniel T. Scannell, former head of the New York City Transit Authority and first vice chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's board of directors.

Robert D'Aubisson, a cashiered army major, came out of hiding last week hinting broadly that a coup was in the offing in El Salvador and asserting that the Reagan Administration ''would not be bothered'' by it. Denials thundered forth from Washington and, as if on cue, after weeks of stressing the military nature of an alleged Soviet-and Cuban-supported insurgency, the Administration directed attention to political and economic concerns. A coup ''would be of the gravest concern to us,'' President Reagan said, asserting, ''We're opposed to terrorism of the right or left.'' He rejected comparisons with American involvement in Vietnam, saying El Salvador ''is, you might say, our front yard'' and that outside forces were ''aiming at the whole of Central and possibly later South America and, I'm sure, eventually North America.'' He insisted, however, that sending American troops to El Salvador ''is not in our reckoning at all.''

AFTER halting a 12-year influx of office buildings at a point where they produce about one-third of its property tax revenues, Greenwich is now seeking to block similar construction in other communities, even those across state lines, whenever it appears to threaten the Greenwich environment or way of life. In the most recent example, the Connecticut town has filed two lawsuits against the Town of Rye in New York in an attempt to curtail two separate projects that would add 460,000 square feet of office space on a 320-acre site on the Greenwich border along King Steet near Westchester County Airport. An attorney for Greenwich said he believed it was the first time that a municipality had tried to block development across state lines. Until now, Greenwich relied on building moratoriums in 1968, 1972 and 1976 to slow its own growth. The last one was doubly effective because it was accompanied by changes in all commercial zoning and by extensive amendments to the building regulations. ''We also limited the moratorium to six months,'' said James Sandy, the town planner, ''so that there would be no time for challenges to come up in court while it was in effect.''

It only took four years for Verdi's ''Attila'' to cross the Atlantic after its world premiere in Venice on March 17, 1846 - Verdi was, after all, Italy's foremost young composer with ''Nabucco,'' ''I Lombardi,'' ''Ernani'' and ''I Due Foscari'' in production all over Europe. An outfit called Marty's Havana Italian Opera Company brought ''Attila'' to New York City on April 15, 1850, and the opera was unveiled at Niblo's Garden with Ignazio Marini in the title role, the same bass who created the part in Venice. On the podium was Luigi Arditi, the celebrated composer of ''Il Bacio,'' a salon waltz-song still favored by coloratura sopranos. New York has had to wait 131 years to see its second professional presentation of ''Attila'' - the City Opera revives the opera on Friday night in a production staged by Lotfi Monsouri and first seen in Chicago this past fall. Samuel Ramey stars as the ''Scourge of God,'' while his Roman adversaries will be portrayed by Marilyn Zschau as Odabella, Enrico di Giuseppe as Foresto and Richard Fredricks as Ezio, with Sergiu Comissiona in charge of the orchestra. This is the first installment of an early Verdi cycle at the City Opera, with ''Nabucco'' and ''I Lombardi'' promised for the near future.

''Sophisticated Ladies'' is a sleekly fashioned, dynamically paced, irresistibly friendly medley of some 35 songs written in part or entirely by the masterly Duke Ellington, and one of the nicest small tricks in it is a bit of staging I don't think I ever ran across before. Simple, but makes you purr with delight as it happens. It may even be relevant. A chap's been doing a number dressed as a porter, bent nearly double, pushing his broom across the grotto-blue Lunt-Fontanne stage. When he's finished, there's an extra little spotlight that hasn't been cleared away. Nobody in it; it's just a circle of light waiting to be filled. And so our porter gives it a little swipe with his broom, it blossoms as it spins away from him, in spinning it climbs a step or two to seek out and glorify a girl who's waiting near conductor Mercer Ellington's band. It seems such a willing spotlight, an intelligent spotlight, a spotlight with a life of its own.

Julian W. Davis was barely out of Clemson University a decade ago when the Duke Power company began to plan a giant, three-unit, nuclear-powered electric generating plant in this remote northwestern corner of South Carolina. Now 34 years old and the project's senior construction engineer, the lanky Mr. Davis stood last week on a bluff overlooking his handiwork, a venture once dubbed ''P-81'' after the year it was to be finished. Cherokee unit No. 1, he said, pointing toward a maze of structural steel and the circular concrete walls he hopes will someday contain what he calls ''the home of the heat,'' is about 10 percent built. Unit No. 2, just off to the right, is merely a well-defined excavation in dirt and rock. In the distance lies what appears to be a small lake; a rough hole in the ground that is the site of unit No. 3. Last week, in the latest of a series of construction slowdowns, Duke announced that even unit No. 1 would be delayed ''indefinitely.'' Some think it may never produce a kilowatt of electricity for the 4 million Piedmont Carolinians in Duke's service area. Some $440 million now sunk into Cherokee may have to be written off.

CHICAGO TEN years ago, there was no full-time assistant coach to hunt for basketball players for De Paul University, and even if there was, there was no budget to pay for recruiting. The campus facility was not getting any younger, and neither was the coach. The whispers were becoming louder - at the age of 57, in his 29th year of coaching, the game had passed him by. And Ray Meyer said enough of this. Meyer had never lost as many games in one season as the De Paul team did in 1970-71. But it was not just that the Blue Demons lost 17 games, it was how they lost. Northwestern beat them by 14 points. Kentucky by 21. Louisiana State by 19. San Francisco by 20. Villanova, a team that reached the final of the national tournament that season, beat them by 40. Marquette by 22, Duquesne by 16, Drake by 13, Marquette, again, by 29, Notre Dame by 31, Dayton by 32.

If you act quickly, for about $85 you can buy a coupon that will let you fly between the East and West Coasts for only half the cost of the normal economy or first-class fare. About 250,000 of these coupons have been issued, and they are being sold by about a dozen independent traders who have no connections with the airlines. The coupons were distributed in January by Eastern Airlines, and they offer substantial savings: at this writing about $213 on a first-class ticket and $134 on an economy ticket, even with the cost of the coupon included. Are they a good deal? That depends on whether you can use either night or day coach super saver tickets. Super savers are cheaper, but you usually have to buy them 14 days in advance, commit yourself to a round trip on the same airline and comply with other restrictions.