What was going on when I was born?

AFTER postponing his vacation all summer so he would be around if President Reagan decided to go ahead with the B-1 bomber, Mike Philbin took his wife and four children to the Bahamas for one exactly one week in October. As luck would have it, that was the week Mr. Philbin had been waiting for. The 47-year-old Mr. Philbin is a vice president at the Eaton Corporation's AIL Division in Deer Park, one of more than 40 Long Island companies that have stakes in the billion-dollar bomber project. When he finally left for the Caribbean, the B-1 project had been on hold for more than four years, ever since President Carter delayed its production and ordered further tests. Then, in the middle of the Philbins' vacation, President Reagan announced that he would ask Congress to authorize production of an updated version of the plane. Where did Mr. Philbin hear the big news? In the cocktail lounge of the hotel.

WASHINGTON FOR a quarter of a century and longer, the elderly have been trying to gain recognition as an entity in American life. They have formed organizations, hired lobbyists, boasted about their numbers and influence, elected friends and defeated enemies, sought and won special treatment from the Government. As was the case for other special interest groups, their progress has been incremental, with few dramatic breakthroughs. Other groups with problems perceived as more pressing have launched more strident appeals. Not surprisingly, then, recognition that the elderly are the fastest-growing segment of the population and among the most politically active has been slow in coming.

Two nights after a 32-point loss to the Washington Bullets, one of the worst teams in the league, the unpredictable Knicks overwhelmed the Boston Celtics, the defending champions and one of the best teams, 103-83, at Madison Square Garden last night. It was the lowest point total for the Celtics this season, and it resulted in their fourth loss in 23 games. Coupled with the Philadelphia 76ers' 114-105 victory over the Nets, it dropped the Celtics into second place in the Atlantic Division. After the loss to Washington, Sonny Werblin, president of the Madison Square Garden Corporation, which owns the Knicks, had criticized the Knick players for a lack of effort. Although the players were divided on whether Werblin's criticisms had had any effect on their play last night, they agreed that their defensive effort against the Celtics had been their finest of the season.

Adozen years ago, he was one of the hottest directors in Hollywood, with such recent triumphs as ''Bonnie and Clyde,'' ''Alice's Restaurant'' and ''Little Big Man'' to his credit. But in the last decade, Arthur Penn has made only two films, neither very successful, and although he has kept busy as a stage director, his name has faded in the minds of many American moviegoers. This month Mr. Penn emerges from what he has come to view as something of a dormant phase with a new film, ''Four Friends,'' the story of Danilo, a young Yugoslav immigrant, three of his high school classmates, and their tangled lives as they struggle through the turbulent 1960's. Originally written by Steven Tesich, who also wrote the screenplay for ''Breaking Away,'' the final version of the story was the result of several months of harmonious collaboration between Mr. Tesich and Mr. Penn. Although the movie focuses on the intertwined paths of one young woman and the three young men who are all in love with her, it also provides a kaleidoscopic view of the 1960's, hurtling rapidly from short-haired teen-agers jitterbugging in bobby socks through glimpses of Mississippi-bound Freedom Riders, angry protesters burning draft cards, raffishly attired hippies cavorting in the streets of New York, and men in spacesuits walking on the moon.

HARTFORD IT was just a year ago last Friday that Connecticut was stunned by the announcement from Gov. Ella T. Grasso that she was resigning, effective Dec. 31, ''by reason of physical disability'' caused by her fight with cancer. Last Thursday, Connecticut residents awoke to the news that the Governor who had succeeded the late Mrs. Grasso - William A. O'Neill - was undergoing heart surgery after being hospitalized since Nov. 20 with what had been described as a mild heart attack. Once again, concerns about the health of a Governor had cast new uncertainties over the political and governmental life of the state. A visitor to the state Capitol might not have noticed any immediate difference. And indeed government business continued without serious interruption. When a Governor is unavailable, the Lieutenant Governor can make executive decisions in consultation with the Governor's staff and relevant state commissioners.

Two short-handed goals by Butch Goring were just what the Islanders needed tonight to outscore the Minnesota North Stars, 8-5, at Metropolitan Center. In the first confrontation since their meeting last May for the Stanley Cup championship, which the Islanders won, the teams were leading their respective divisions while fending off mild slumps. Minnesota's slide continued with only one victory in its last nine games. The Islanders ended a two-game losing streak.

The Reagan Administration resumed ringing its Central America alarm bells last week, but for the first time tried to play a harmonious theme. Attempting to clear up confusion caused by months of contradictory statements, Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig and other officials outlined an approach intended to gain regional support for moves to check alleged Nicaraguan and Cuban subversion and to minimize the need for American military involvement. In a speech to foreign ministers of the Organization of American States on the Caribbean island of St. Lucia, Mr. Haig declared that Washington would join in ''doing whatever is prudent and necessary to prevent any country in Central America from becoming the platform of terror and war in the region.'' He accused Nicaragua's Sandinist Government of building up an army three times larger than that of the deposed Somoza dictatorship. Sounding the same theme in Washington, a senior Administration official accused Nicaragua of trying to become a regional ''superpower.'' Mr. Haig said the buildup threatened to widen warfare that is already taking heavy casualties in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras (which last week elected Dr. Roberto Suazo Cordova, a right-of-center rural physician, as its first civilian President since 1972).

After months of often contradictory signals, Reagan Administration officials say they have settled on a four-part approach to dealing with what they see as the problems of Cuban and Soviet intervention in Nicaragua and elsewhere in Central America. They say they hope this tentative plan, which they say they will refine in coming weeks, will involve other Latin nations and reduce the necessity of a single-handed American military role. The general outline of the approach was made public Friday in Castries, St. Lucia, to the Organization of American States by Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig Jr. It was amplified in private talks with diplomats and journalists. Warning Called 'a Solid Plus' On Mr. Haig's airplane returning to Washington Friday night, reporters were told that the Secretary believed his forceful warning about Nicaragua's becoming a potential Communist bastion in Central America had been ''a solid plus.'' The other Latin delegates were almost unanimous, the reporters were told, in wanting to do something to prevent what Mr. Haig called in his speech the transformation of Nicaragua into a ''platform of terror and war in the region.''

In one respect, Andrei D. Sakharov's 12-day experiment in selfstarvation proved out last week. Soviet authorities announced they had ''hospitalized'' the 60-year-old physicist and winner of the 1975 Nobel Peace Prize and his wife, Yelena G. Bonner, 58.

THE question was posed to Bill Cartwright, a center for the New York Knicks, almost as an aside - as a means of keeping the conversation flowing in the players' lounge just about an hour before a recent game. Thus, it was almost startling that it would produce such a response at this quiet moment. Had he ever seen any player intimidate Maurice Lucas, the Knicks' quintessential power forward, this season? Just at the thought, the usually soft-spoken Cartwright laughed aloud. Then, staring at the questioner in disbelief, he asked, ''Who? Luke?'' ''The only kind of player that might have an edge,'' Cartwright said, ''is one who can take him outside, one-on-one. But he's still got to play Luke on the other end, and he can't guard him either.

It's a ''Cheshire cat'' situation, says Earlene Spellmann, but she isn't grinning. Her building at 207 West 106th Street has received a preliminary offering plan for conversion to a cooperative. But the sponsor is proposing a leasehold cooperative. The cooperative corporation would not own the building or the land under it outright, as is the usual case. Instead it would lease the land and building on a long-term basis. Land and building would revert to the owner when the lease expires, unless it is renewed. As Mrs. Spellman sees this arrangement, the value of the buyers' purchase would be subject to a slow vanishing act, like the Cheshire cat. ''We would lose everything at the end,'' she said. ''My family wouldn't have a penny of it.'' Leasehold cooperatives are not without precedent in New York State. The New York State Attorney General's office estimates that about 5 percent of Manhattan's cooperatives were built or converted on leased land. But recently there have been more attempts to convert to leasehold cooperatives, under terms that have been widely questioned by tenants and their lawyers.

S OMETIME in the next few weeks, Dolores Vorhies and her son Tim will submit a proposal to New Jersey legislators to ban physical punishment drills in sports throughout the state. ''You have to try to make people aware and coaches too that it doesn't necessarily make a person tough by punishing them or doing something extra,'' Mrs. Vorhies said recently, from her son's home in Rockaway Township. ''It kills them.'' Four years ago last month, Bob Vorhies, a promising freshman football player at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, died in his dormitory room after completing an exhausting series of punishment drills for a dormitory incident. An out-of-court settlement was reached between the family and school last August; one of the conditions bans physical punishment drills from V.P.I. football practices.