What was going on when I was born?

WHILE many designers have devised ways of dealing imaginatively with tile, there are few opportunities in the real world of designerand-client relationships for budget-free and fanciful tiling schemes. Price and high installation costs tend to make tile applications a luxury in interior design. But if given the chance, few designers would not jump at the opportunity of doing whatever they pleased with tile. An exhibition, entitled ''Casa Tile '82,'' sponsored by the Italian Tile Center, gave some of New York's top designers a chance to do just that.

The Transit Authority announced yesterday that it would stop installing plastic electrical tubing in subway stations as a result of warnings by health authorities that the material releases toxic fumes when burned. Transit officials said, however, that they would leave in place the tubing, made of polyvinyl chloride, that was recently installed in more than 50 stations throughout the IRT system. ''I don't think it is warranted to go back and tear it all out now,'' John D. Simpson, the Transit Authority president, said at a meeting in Manhattan of the board of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. 'Most Telling Admission' The tubing already installed presents ''no imminent hazard,'' Mr. Simpson said, because it carries low-voltage wire and is in wellventilated areas.

A Reuters article in Business Day on Jan. 18 incorrectly reported a domestic oil estimate. The American Petroleum Institute estimated 1981 domestic oil demand at an average of 15.9 million barrels daily, while domestic crude oil production was 8.6 million barrels daily, little changed from 1980.

A graph in Business Day on Tuesday incorrectly stated the contribution to revenues made by two Dennison Corporation divisions. The company's technical papers division accounted for 14 percent of revenues in 1980 and the industrial systems division for 31 percent.

A city panel that has been accused repeatedly of being overly generous to real-estate developers refused yesterday to grant multimillion-dollar tax breaks to two large commercial projects in Manhattan. A third applicant, facing probable rejection of his request, withdrew from consideration altogether. The unanimous votes of the city's Industrial and Commercial Incentive Board provided the first concrete indication that the Koch administration planned to act on its pledge to remold and restrict its tax-abatement policies. The board also voted, as it said it would, to prevent automatic tax breaks in Manhattan south of 96th Street. ''I think this is an evolution,'' said Karen N. Gerard, the Deputy Mayor for Economic Policy and Development and chairman of the sevenmember board after its meeting at 1 Police Plaza. ''Abatement is a tool which has to change because the times have changed.''

Frederick Reed, who has driven trucks for Hemingway Transport Inc. for 23 years, recently got a letter from Richard E. Edwards, the company's president and chief executive officer. ''Events that will occur in the next few weeks will determine whether our company will continue in business or go down the drain into financial ruin,'' the letter began. Then Mr. Edwards outlined to Mr. Reed - and to the 1,500 other drivers and employees at Hemingway, who got the same letter - a series of union concessions that he said would be necessary for the survival of the company, a medium-size regional trucker that lost $300,000 last year. The concessions he wanted go far beyond those already granted in the National Master Freight Agreement that has been reached between Trucking Management Inc., the industry's bargaining group, and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. That agreement is now being voted on by union members.

Despite the impression of accommodation and harmony left by President Reagan in his endorsement of the Fed's policies at his news conference last week, Mr. Volcker, in his first Capitol Hill appearances since then, made it clear that he still had doubts about whether the President's program can work the way the Administration has promised. In testimony before the Senate Finance Committee today and the House Ways and Means Committee Tuesday, Mr. Volcker said Congress and the Administration had to reduce future deficits further than the President projected or there would be no assurance of the sustained economic recovery the Administration has predicted. He also questioned the Administration's assumption that a dramatic increase in personal and business savings would overcome the deficits' adverse effect on interest rates. The More the Better ''If you do what the President is suggesting, you have taken a very big chunk out of the problem,'' the Fed chairman told the Senate Finance Committee today. ''Now I would feel more confortable if you went beyond that. If you want to make a striking impact on the financial markets, the more you do, the better off you're going to be.''

With rebates in effect, the nation's Big Three auto manufacturers today reported their first 10-day sales gain since September - a scant 1.9 percent for mid-February. Together, the Chrysler Corporation, the Ford Motor Company and the General Motors Corporation sold 162,505 cars in the most recent period, up from 159,515 in the comparable 1981 period. Chrysler, the only domestic auto maker to have a sales decline in the period, also issued its earnings report today for the final quarter. It reported a smaller-than-expected loss of $66.9 million in the fourth quarter of 1981 and a loss of $475.6 million for the entire year. (Page D5.)

An article on Feb. 8 describing a new Soviet film about John Reed gave the year of Trotsky's death incorrectly. He was assassinated in 1940.

Not long after the Vernon Valley and Great Gorge ski areas opened about a decade ago, Lois and Wheymer South sold their 30 milking cows and all but five of the 130 acres on their farm. The land out beyond their white frame house is fallow now. The barn is idle. The silo is covered with ivy vines and a big sign advertising the ski slopes up Route 94.

''Most people don't know where El Salvador is, but the ghost of Vietnam hangs over every instance of military support or action in a foreign country.'' - Representative Bill Alexander, on Reagan aid plan for Latin America. (A16:2.)

The United States Navy has for the last two months stationed a destroyer equipped with electronic surveillance devices off the Pacific coast of Nicaragua and El Salvador to gather intelligence, Defense Department officials said today. The officials said the vessel's mission was to monitor shipments of arms from Nicaragua across the Gulf of Fonseca to anti-Government guerrillas in El Salvador and to listen with to radio traffic in the region. The Reagan Administration has long charged that guerrillas in El Salvador have been receiving arms provided by the Soviet Union and its allies through Cuba and Nicaragua and that the Sandinist Government in Nicaragua and Cuban advisers are supporting the Salvadoran rebels. Mission Is Termed 'Routine' Administration officials said the destroyer's mission was ''routine'' and intended only to keep the United States informed. They said the ship had been in international waters at all times and its presence was not provocative.