What was going on when I was born?

ONCE upon a time, when a gallon of gasoline cost 20 cents and mortgage rates were at 5 1/2 percent, mustard came in two flavors - French's and Gulden's. There was still only one kind of kind of bagel - hard. It was a time when we had just learned to distinguish between Emmenthaler and Gruyere and been introduced to red wine vinegar to use in place of white distilled. Food purchasing was simple, if uninspired. Today it is simply bewildering. We have entered the era of brand proliferation, the dozens of flavors and colors of basic products that set our heads spinning when we shop. According to Bill Hyde, the manager of Balducci's in Greenwich Village, this proliferation is due to more ''sophisticated tastes.'' ''Americans,'' he said, ''have discovered what Europeans have known about for a long time.'' But like so many things, Americans believe if a little is good, more is better. Or, as Ted Kronyn of Universal Foods Company, an importing firm, said, ''It doesn't take much for Americans to pick up on something and then you get a tremendous ride very ordinary.''

MORE and more people with personal problems are coming out of the closet and seeking the help of psychotherapists. Prompted by the stresses of family and social upheavals, the narcissism of the ''me'' generation, publicity about new approaches to treatment and a plethora of popular books prescribing do-it-yourself emotional inventories, they are trying to unravel the intricacies of their psyches and improve their potential for happiness. But the smorgasbord of available approaches to psychological problems would confuse even the most stable potential client. To someone who is emotionally troubled the staggering number of choices can be paralyzing. In addition to traditional talk therapies, there are therapies called Jungian, Gestalt, Adlerian, Rogerian, group, reality, cognitive, integrity, drug, sex, family, marital, shock, hypnotic, drama, poetry and primal scream. These have been joined in recent years by biofeedback, behavior modification, orthomolecular psychiatry, rolfing, transactional analysis and bioenergetics, not to mention such lay approaches as ESTing, rebirthing and various ''anonymous'' self-help groups. ''The Psychotherapy Handbook,'' edited by Richie Herink (New American Library, $9.95), describes more than 250 therapies now in use.

A medical examiner said today that the bodies of 33 drowning victims amounted to ''good, hard evidence'' that many of the thousands of illegal Haitian immigrants who have made it to these shores have been helped by smugglers. Dr. Ronald Wright of Broward County performed autopsies on the Haitians who drowned yesterday morning when their homemade boat capsized within sight of the expensive condominiums of Hillsboro Beach, a resort town 10 miles north of Fort Lauderdale. The medical examiner said his examinations showed that those who died had consumed large, cooked meals less than two hours before they drowned. The meal could not have been cooked aboard the overcrowded 30-foot boat and the food was fresh, so Dr. Wright concluded that it must have been served on a ''mother ship'' or freighter operated by smugglers. U.S. Prosecution Seen Possible He said he also thought that by pinpointing the time of consumption he might have established that the Haitians were dropped off in choppy waters that lie within the jurisdiction of the United States, and the State of Florida, and thus that the smugglers could be prosecuted if caught.

In the midafternoon drizzle, there were people giving out leftist literature at the arching gates that lead to College Walk on the Columbia University campus. It sometimes seems that there have always been people at these gates giving out literature - through rain and snow, gloom of night, the heat of the Vietnam War and the lukewarm early 1960's and 1980's. The technique never varies: the mimeographed flier, the paper passed from one hand to another, and the ritual crumpling of the flier that is then tossed into the trash can that has long been set just inside the gates, perhaps for this very purpose. Columbia is a place in which almost anything can be disseminated - and discarded. It is a large and distinguished university, and so it is a kind of safe house of ideas, a home to the thoughts of Lenin, Trotsky and Che Guevera as well as Plato, Socrates and Descartes.

The Consolidated Edison Company reported yesterday that its earnings for the third quarter rose by 51.9 percent, to $202.9 million, or $3.05 a share, from $133.6 million, or $1.96 a share, for the similar quarter last year. It attributed the gain primarily to the 15.5 percent rate increase that the New York State Public Service Commission approved last March 12.

Back in 1932, in the depths of the Depression, the General Electric Company found it tough to sell refrigerators. Consumers, hard pressed to buy even food to fill a refrigerator, were hardly interested in purchasing new appliances. But General Electric solved this by setting up a credit subsidiary, the General Electric Credit Corporation, to provide consumer financing and get appliance sales rolling. In the nearly five decades since, G.E. Credit has grown to become one of the invisible giants of finance. It owns the nation's largest fleet of tankers (by tonnage), is the biggest industrial equipment lessor, offers residential second mortgages and finances such new ventures as Atari Inc.'s ''Pong'' games.

The United States said today that it would supply Poland with $29 million in surplus dairy products to help resolve its ''pressing difficulties peacefully and without foreign interference.'' In addition, Administration officials said, $50 million in food aid is being planned for early next year. So far, the United States has given Poland $741 million in credits and food aid this year.

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence recommended today that the Reagan Administration abandon its plan to permit the Central Intelligence Agency to infiltrate and influence domestic groups. Senator Barry Goldwater, Republican of Arizona, chairman of the panel, and Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Democrat of New York, the vice chairman, said that the panel would urge the White House later this week to retain the restrictions on infiltration of domestic groups that were imposed by President Carter in January 1978. The recommendation is the first formal expression of bipartisan Congressional opposition to a key section of a proposed executive order governing intelligence activities that is being reviewed by the House and Senate intelligence panels. Recommendation Not Binding The committee's recommendation is not binding on President Reagan, whose signature alone gives an executive order the force of law, but it reflects growing opposition to sections of the proposed order. The sections at issue would provide the intelligence agencies with greatly expanded authority to collect information about Americans and foreigners residing in the United States who may pose a threat to national security.

When the top economic policymakers in the Reagan Administration sit down to a breakfast meeting once a week in the Treasury Secretary's private dining room, they often order eggs but they rarely agree on how they should be cooked. In some ways, there is the same kind of disagreement over how this Administration should put together its economic outlook for the future, a forecast that is the underpinning of the Reagan budget. Top economic policymakers agree on the course of policy, but they often disagree on how to serve it up. The wrinkle is that, within President Reagan's advisory group, there are two distinct strains of economic philosophy - the supply siders, who have pushed large business and personal tax cuts to spur savings and investment, and the monetarists, who advocate slow, steady restrictive growth in the money supply as a cure for inflation.

The F.T.C. will go to court to keep LTV from buying out Grumman. The agency said it would file a complaint today charging that the acquisition would diminish competition in the aerospace industry. LTV said it would fight the lawsuit. The Administration's antimerger action was its second in a week. (Page D1.)

TO Alan King's reputation as a producer, actor, stand-up comic, master of ceremonies, philanthropist and tennis player, add that he is a passionate eater, a cook and a restaurant buff. ''Listen,'' he said over an Italian lunch at Il Nido, ''when I get up in the morning I have to decide what I'm going to have for dinner or I can't get through the day. When I get to a hotel that I'm going to be in for more than a day or two, I go to the kitchen and introduce myself to the chef and then send him a bottle of Scotch or really fine brandy, and I ask him what he's got that's especially good. ''And when I'm in Los Angeles, as I am one week of every month, everyone I work with takes care of arranging meetings and business matters and I arrange dinner. Food there is getting better now that they have so many New Yorkers.''

As the already serious financial condition of many of the state's savings banks worsens, legal technicalities are making it difficult for the New York State Banking Department to avert some failures - leading the department to seek urgent changes in state law. Notably, some savings banks may find themselves legally barred from paying interest to some depositors. This is because technically the depositors are owners, and the ''interest'' is a dividend. ''If you can't pay interest to depositors, you don't have a bank,'' said Muriel Siebert, New York State Superintendent of Banks.