What was going on when I was born?

Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger spent most of last week touring the Middle East trying to strengthen American military ties with the Arab nations and talking about redirecting policy away from Israel. Other Administration officials, led by Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig Jr. and including some Pentagon officials, are insisting that there is no change in Middle East policy, and especially no redirection away from Israel. Does this Administration have a policy toward the Middle East? And does it favor one side over the other? Decisions on Ad Hoc Basis The answer to the first question appears to be no. By all accounts, President Reagan has yet to hammer out the differences between his two Secretaries and formulate a policy. Decisions are made on an ad hoc basis from week to week.

Four months after the slayings of a Brink's guard and two policemen in an armored-car robbery in Rockland County, a complex story has begun to emerge of a subterranean culture sustained by a small network of people who view themselves as warriors in a global revolution. It is a group of single-minded people leading double lives, often under multiple aliases, of former Black Panthers and Weather Underground leaders, now in their middle 30's, who returned suddenly and dramatically to public attention after a decade in which their names had been largely forgotten. Within an hour of the shootings on Oct. 20, three of them were arrested when their speeding car containing bulletproof vests, ski masks and canvas bank moneybags smashed to a halt against a concrete retaining wall in Nyack, N.Y. Those arrests, and others that followed, revived an atmosphere of radical leftism surviving from the years of antiwar protest and civil-rights activity. Why these men and women were in Rockland County, as at least some of them were, is only now coming out in interviews with lawenforcement authorities, defense attorneys, friends of the accused and some of the defendants themselves.

Inflation in the seven largest non-Communist industrial nations has dropped sharply in the last year as a result of slow economic growth, reduced wage demands and falling commodity prices. Economists expect the downward trend to continue. By the end of 1981, inflation in those countries had declined to a rate of about 8 percent, compared with 12.2 percent in 1980. In recent months, various private and government economists have been growing more optimistic about the outlook.

Car sales for the nation's Big Three auto companies fell 4.8 percent in the first 10 days of February, the smallest decline this year. The General Motors Corporation, the Ford Motor Company and the Chrysler Corporation sold 15,370 cars daily in the nine selling days of the period this year, compared with 16,151 in the 10 selling days of the same 1981 period. The seasonally adjusted annual rate for the period was 6.3 million, up from the late January rate of 5.5 million. G.M. reported the smallest sales decline of the domestic industry, selling 9,792 cars daily, down four-tenths of 1 percent from the 1981 period when 9,834 cars were sold daily. G.M.'s sales totaled 88,131, for a 62 percent share of the market, up from the 57.8 percent share held in the comparable 1981 period.

Prime Minister Menachem Begin, backed by all of Israel's major political parties, appealed publicly to President Reagan today to reject Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger's proposal to sell advanced weapons to Jordan. Speaking in Parliament, Mr. Begin presented an array of statistics on what he called ''the mighty, almost unimaginable flow of sophisticated weaponry reaching the Arab states from both the East and the West.'' This arms buildup, he contended, jeopardizes Israel's qualitative military edge over the Arabs, which President Reagan has pledged to maintain. Parliament then approved, by a vote of 88 to 3, with 6 abstentions, a resolution expressing ''deep concern'' over Mr. Weinberger's proposal, which, it said, ''poses a serious danger to Israel's security.'' The only opponents were members of the Communist Party.

A Government minister who has met several times with Lech Walesa said today that there would be no negotiations with Mr. Walesa as long as he insisted on having his advisers at his side. The Minister, Stanislaw Ciosek, who is charged with labor relations, also said in an interview that the Solidarity leader would remain in detention as long as Poland remains a possible ''barrel of gunpowder.'' Mr. Ciosek said that the union leader was being ''excellently treated'' and was in good health at a secret location near Warsaw, where he was occasionally visited by his wife and by a priest. Solidarity sources said last month that Mr. Walesa was willing to start talks, but only in the presence of legal advisers. Mr. Ciosek said the Government had ruled out allowing the union leader to be united ''with the brains of his experts.''

STRIPPED of pedagogical euphemisms, tests divide the winners from the losers. Since there are usually more losers, or low scorers, than winners, people who hate tests outnumber those who do not. In a society that clings to the statement that ''all men are created equal,'' dislike of tests - the tool that gives the lie to that assumption - will always be controversial. They are understandably least popular with those who are at the bottom of the social and economic pyramid and face an arduous climb up. In recent weeks, two separate reports on the impact of tests on that group, the minorities, have been made public, but their conclusions differ sufficiently to risk setting off a new round of misunderstandings.

A graph in some copies of Sports- Monday yesterday, accompanying an article about the hockey player Mike Rogers, included an incorrect label. His goals and assists for the 1981-82 season have been scored with the New York Rangers.

An unusual popular movement to help the city's homeless is taking shape in New York City. Individual New Yorkers and churches, synagogues and private groups - such as the Astor Foundation and the Exxon Corporation - are beginning to join in the effort. And the city's Human Resources Administration has noted in the last few weeks a marked increase in calls from residents reporting homeless men and women in their neighborhoods who need help. This increase in public concern and action appears to have been spurred in part by a remark by Mayor Koch, who urged churches and synagogues to take in the homeless. Another factor may have been the publicity that followed the death in the street last month of an elderly woman, Rebecca Smith, who had lived in a cardboard box at 10th Avenue and 17th Street. She died of exposure to the cold as city authorities were preparing to help her.

International Israel appealed to President Reagan to reject Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger's proposal to sell advanced weapons to Jordan. The plea was made by Prime Minister Menachem Begin, who was backed by all of Israel's major parties. Speaking in Parliament, Mr. Begin presented an array of statistics showing what he called an ''almost unimaginable flow of sophisticated weapons reaching the Arab states from both the East and the West.'' The buildup, he said, is jeopardizing Israel's military edge over the Arabs. (Page A1, Column 6.) A huge drilling rig reportedly sank in a storm off the coast of Newfoundland, and all 84 men aboard were said to be missing in 50-foot-high waves and feared dead. (A1:4-5.)

An old garbage dump here that is to be the site for a major industrial park is contaminated with buried pockets of toxic polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCB's. The landowner, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, disclosed the pollution today. ''At this point, I don't want to say we have abandoned the idea of developing the site,'' said Neal R. Montanus, director of industrial development for the Port Authority. ''We want to see what we've got and what we are going to do with it.''

The new Mid-Manhattan Library, a spacious complex of airy rooms, open stacks and bright colors, will be formally opened to the public Thursday. The library is the central resource center for the 82 branches of the New York Public Library, which serves Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island. It provides collections and services that are not available elsewhere in the New York Public Library system, or that are available more in depth there than elsewhere. The library, which has been opening to the public in fits and starts for a year, is in the old Arnold Constable department store building at Fifth Avenue and 40th Street. It appeals particularly to people who work in midtown and who come in by the hundreds at lunchtime to browse through the huge ground floor popular library section. There are sometimes up to 100 copies of a best-selling fiction or nonfiction book here.