What was going on when I was born?

ONE popular mayoral anecdote on public behavior concerns residents of a poorly paved street. Being human they complained. Being responsive, the mayor paved. The road now being smooth, people speed. The residents, still human, complain. The mayor, still responsive, sends out the radar. The police apprehend the speeders who turn out to be mostly other neighborhood residents who in turn complain about being arrested for driving only slightly over the foolishly low speed limit. Then in the spring all residents together complain about the higher taxes that resulted from paving the road and paying for the radar units. Fingers of doubt begin to massage the mayoral mind as to why he bothered to pave the road in the first place. Then as to why he bothered to run in the first place. Each mayor has a different answer to that one, mostly high-flown. Many, perhaps most, are motivated chiefly by desire to improve the world. Others relish power. Some praise the roar of the crowd. Every politician has some portion of each of these set upon a solid base of ego. Even a public servant as mild-mannered as I must admit that a great engine of self-esteem lurks just beneath the surface of a quiet public personality. Politics is no job for a soul plagued with self-doubt.

A closed shopping center built as an oldtime village with shops located in a grist mill, a tavern, a schoolhouse and other period buildings is being converted into condominium apartments in this community just west of Summit. A model was recently opened for what will eventually be 50 condominium houses and apartments. The shopping center, Murray Hill Square - on six acres on the outskirts of New Providence -was planned and constructed by Natale G. Conti, a builder who lives in New Providence. The mall opened in 1976.

NASSAU, the Bahamas H IS religion prohibits magic. Muhammad Ali mentions this as he performs some sleight of hand in his hotel room while waiting for a fight some people say he shouldn't attempt, and others suspect may never come off. While waiting it out, Muhammad Ali takes three unequal ropes and makes them the same length without being detected. He stuffs a handkerchief into his huge fist and makes it disappear. He turns a half dollar into a nickel with a flick of his hand. But after that trick, he deliberately exposes the device that allows him to switch the coins. He says in the hoarse voice that worries his friends: ''Muslims don't believe in magic. That's why I've got to explain what I do. I believe in God, and I believe in knowledge, in education. No magic, no voodoo.''

Poland's Communist Party leadership, responding to Friday's initiative by the nation's leader, Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski, demanded tonight that Parliament approve ''extraordinary measures'' to curb labor unrest. These were said to include a law that would permit the banning of strikes. The right to strike was at the heart of the August 1980 agreement on civil and labor rights between the Government and Solidarity, the independent union movement. The call by the Central Committee, the party's policy-making body, did not specify in its resolution tonight the kind of legislation that it had in mind. But an authoritative source who attended the committee's closed, two-day meeting here said the plan included a measure to ban strikes.

Saudi Arabia's fellow Arabs last week succeeded where Israel had failed. They derailed a Middle East peace plan that traded tacit recognition of Israel for a Palestinian state. A partial boycott of an Arab League summit in Morocco that the Saudis had hoped would endorse their first peace initiative led King Hassan, the host, to adjourn the meeting only four hours after it began. He and the Saudis apparently decided that would be less damaging to Arab prestige than another prolonged display of disunity. King Hassan said Arab foreign ministers would set a date for the ''next part'' of the meeting, but gave no indication when that might be.

That close gubernatorial election in New Jersey, it turned out last week, was not quite as close as it first seemed. With virtually all of the 2.3 million ballots cast on Nov. 3 recounted, Republican Thomas H. Kean picked up nearly 150 additional votes, increasing his margin to about 1,800 votes and leaving little doubt about who will occupy the Governor's Mansion come January.

Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig Jr. said today that although there may be unresolved questions about the makeup of a Sinai peacekeeping force there was no doubt that a force would be put into place, and that Sinai would be returned to Egypt as planned. On the Sinai force, Mr. Haig said, ''We are now in the final stages of determining whether it is going to be a broad peacekeeping force, which we prefer, or a narrow one.'' The Secretary was speaking at the headquarters of the Freedoms Foundation in Valley Forge, Pa. The foundation, a private, nonprofit group that promotes the study of the United States Constitution, presented Mr. Haig with its American Patriots Medal.

THE Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford's encyclopedic art museum and the oldest of its kind in the nation, is developing a reputation for swimming against the economic tide. At a time when many art institutions are threatened by cutbacks in financing, the Atheneum is in the middlle of a comprehensive renovation of its physical plant and enlarging the size and quality of its art collection. Tracy Atkinson, the director since 1977, is philosophic about the fall off of financing for art institutions, especially from Government sources. ''I think we had to expect this,'' he said. ''The feds were in no position to take over the $15 billion museum business in this country, nor do I think we want to impose that structure.'' He noted that while Reagan Administration policies might hurt museums that rely on Federal subsidies to make acquisitions, ''I don't see that we will be affected at all.''

Managing the development, production and testing of billions of dollars worth of new weapons and equipment and the use and maintenance of highly sophisticated arms systems are serious concerns in the military, officials say. But while critics outside the services have expressed skepticism, senior officers and civilian officials in the Pentagon and others in the field and at sea said in interviews that they were optimistic that the services could handle the problems. Difficulties are expected in excess costs, such as in the M-1 tank procurement program, and in maintenance, but the officers said they believed the military had learned from its mistakes. At Odds With Pentagon's Critics These views run counter to those of outside critics. For instance, James Fallows, in his book, ''National Defense,'' said, ''There is a growing concern within the military itself that airplanes, tanks, ships and missiles have grown too complex, expensive and delicate to be useful in warfare or credible for deterrent purposes.''

HARTFORD THE mild winters of the last three years have provided the state and several towns something of a windfall. Because the snowfall has been well below average, road maintenance and overtime accounts have either been sufficient or have shown a surplus. The State Department of Transportation says that it has not exceeded its $12 million allocation for snow and ice control in any of the last three years. In Bridgeport, more than $100,000 remained in the maintenance budget at the end of last year, according to William McMahon, the Comptroller.

-------------------------------------------------------------------- Carl Sagan, professor of astronomy and director of the Laboratory for Planetary Studies at Cornell, is the author of ''Cosmos.'' LIFE ITSELF Its Origin and Nature. By Francis Crick. 192 pp. New York: Simon & Schuster. $12.95. By CARL SAGAN ''ONCE the scale and nature of the galaxy is appreciated, it is intolerable not to know whether we are its sole inhabitants. It may even be very dangerous not to do so. ... To show no interest in these topics is to be truly uneducated.'' In this book, Francis Crick, the doyen of modern molecular biology, considers the grand panorama of cosmic evolution and offers the highly unorthodox proposal that life on earth originally came from other planetary systems.

THE five-bill juvenile justice package that unanimously passed the Assembly last week is being hailed by some experts as a panacea for the system and being deplored by others as opening a Pandora's box of new troubles. The bills, sponsored by Assemblyman Martin A. Herman, Democrat of Woodbury, would effect a new code of juvenile justice as of Jan. 1, 1983. To become law, all five bills would have to be approved. The package is now in the Senate. ''Now, there are as many systems of juvenile justice as we have judges,'' Mr. Herman says. ''These bills would create one system, with a uniformity of sentencing and a court to deal with the entire family, instead of just the juvenile.''