What was going on when I was born?

''As I see it, the bird is ready, the weather's great, we're ready, the entire team is ready.

Despite an advertising blitz by the nation's financial institutions, investment in Individual Retirement Accounts since the beginning of the year has been slower than hoped, if not disappointing. ''It's not that I'm discouraged,'' said Michael Evans of Evans Economics Inc., a Washington-based consulting firm. ''There just hasn't been a groundswell of enthusiasm I would have expected initially. As far as I can tell, I.R.A.'s haven't had any effect at all on savings.''

After a string of upsets, Boston College, the team some said had no right to be in the national collegiate tournament, was finally eliminated this afternoon. The Eagles were defeated by Houston, 99-92, before 15,627 fans in the final of the Midwest Regional at the Checkerdome. The 191 total points were the most in any tournament game this season. ''We did score a few baskets,'' said Houston's coach, Guy Lewis, in his best aw-shucks style. ''But we just did what we had to do.'' The Cougars (25-7) advanced to the Final Four in New Orleans, where they will meet top-ranked North Carolina on Saturday. It is their first appearance in the national semifinals since 1968. North Carolina qualified by defeating Villanova at Raleigh, N.C., 70-60.

Five years after a threat by the Nestle Company to leave New York State galvanized officials into helping it with a planned move to Harrison, the company has sold the halfcompleted building that was to have become its new headquarters. The state's assistance to Nestle in 1977 - given after Governor Carey intervened personally - included the construction of a special exit on nearby Interstate 684. But now, Nestle, citing changed financial projections, has decided to remain in White Plains, where it has about 1,000 employees.

New York City officials and neighborhood activists say they are witnessing a marked slowing of the wholesale devastation that plagued the Bronx in the 1970's. The burning and abandonment that cut a wide swath from south to north through the borough have not stopped. But the neighborhoods that are now on the northern edges of the devastated areas show new signs of stability, officials say. Among the encouraging factors, they say, are that hundreds of buildings are being rehabilitated, that private money has been successfully enlisted in the effort and that tenants and whole communities have organized to fight on behalf of their buildings and neighborhoods.

Federal bank regulators, despite objections from some banking groups, are expected to approve on Monday a new short-term savings certificate intended to help thrift institutions and commercial banks better compete with money market funds. Industry analysts said that the Depository Institutions Deregulation Committee was likely to back a proposal to create a short-term ''money market'' certificate with a 91-day maturity and a $5,000 minimum balance. The interest rate ceiling would be tied to the 13-week Treasury bill discount rate. The proposal would also include a rate differential of a quarter percentage point for thrift institutions such as savings and loan associations and mutual savings banks.

With an unusual amount of emotion for a basketball team that is accustomed to being in control of both its opponent and itself, North Carolina took hold of Villanova at the start of the East Regional championship game today and did not let go until it was time to plan another trip to the Final Four of the National Collegiate Athletic Association tournament. The Tar Heels defeated Villanova, 70-60, for their second consecutive regional championship, the seventh in the last 16 years, and the eighth over all. With the five starters scoring in double figures for the second consecutive game, the Tar Heels maintained a subtle sense of control even when they were just 5 points ahead with fewer than nine minutes to play. ''They really showed they're the number one basketball team in the country today,'' said Rollie Massimino, the Villanova coach. But even as the Tar Heels celebrated, there were reminders that years from now, the team and its coach will be judged by whether North Carolina can show it is the top team by reaching the national championship game and taking the title next Monday night at the Superdome at New Orleans.

This prosperous prairie town thought it had given ''recession proof'' its true meaning. Situated where the Middle West meets the Sun Belt, Wichita breezed through the turbulent 1970's without a slump, thanks to its booming aviation and oil drilling industries. As for more recent times, Wichita's unemployment rate in January was only 4.5 percent, about half the national average. The current economic slump, it seemed, was also passing Wichita by.

DALLAS IT was near the end of a three-hour workout and Martina Navratilova, the champion tennis player, was serving to Gregg Manning, a young professional just starting on the men's tour. They were indoors in the green and white Brookhaven Tennis Club here. ''Match point,'' she called. They had not been keeping score, but had been working on various points of Miss Navratilova's game, as she prepared for the Avon Championships in Madison Square Garden starting Wednesday. If she wins the $100,000 first prize, and she is favored, it would put her over $3.7 million and she would pass Chris Evert Lloyd - not entered in the tournament -as the career leading money-winner among women tennis professionals. ''Match point'' now simply designated that this would conclude the exercise. But she wanted to simulate game pressure. ''Whenever you call 'match point,' '' Manning warned from his base line, ''don't ever hit it to my forehand.'' Miss Navratilova, her thin blond hair caught up in a pony-tail, nodded. She looked at him for a moment, her angular eyes narrowed. Her high cheekbones and long chin appeared set.

A year ago, when this city was plunged into fiscal crisis by proposed Federal budget cuts and a court ruling against its property tax, hardly anyone took seriously an idea offered by the Chamber of Commerce: that the county government take over the city's Police Department. Since then, however, the City Council, the business community and leading county officials have endorsed the idea. And a number of officials are predicting it will soon be a reality, not from choice but necessity. This industrial city of 241,000 people provides a study in how a shrinking Federal presence is forcing change in American government without any of the formal transfer of powers that President Reagan and the nation's governors have been seeking. Mayor Is Upset About It The city turned to Albany, not Washington, to bail it out of a court-ordered requirement to repay property taxes that were held to violate the law. The heads of Eastman Kodak and other big corporations stepped to center stage and took over, in keeping with the new public affairs. City officials agreed in principle to abandon maintenance of the public safety, a cornerstone of municipal authority.

President Reagan's five-year plan to expand the nation's armed forces has come under increasing attack not only from those who consider it too costly but also from critics who say the Administration has failed to justify the military need for its large budget. The criticism has come from Democrats and Republicans in Congress and from specialists in military matters outside the Government who span the political spectrum. Their arguments have complicated the Administration's attempts to justify sharp rises in military spending when the Federal Government is facing a $91.5 billion deficit for the fiscal year 1983. The prevailing view in Congress is that the 1983 military budget, proposed at $216 billion, will almost certainly be cut, with the only questions being what will be reduced and by how much. The Administration, however, is not without influential allies. Senator John Tower, the Texas Republican who is chairman of the Armed Services Committee, has warned of the dangers from Soviet military power as he has argued vigorously for the proposed military spending increases. He told the Senate Budget Committee last week that ''no Senator can separate himself from the foreign policy consequences of defense budget reductions.''

It was a sometimes tearful, often passionate rush of memory and conviction, applause and silence. ''We have no apologies to make, that we couldn't retaliate, that we couldn't murder, that our parents did not give us the heritage of killing and of vengeance,'' said Dr. Helen N. Fagin, director of Judaic Studies at the University of Miami. ''We have no apologies to make that we passively went to concentration camps, and we did not -we went there because we were surrounded by machine guns, because we were prisoners who were emaciated, beaten down psychologically and physically.'' Dr. Fagin was one of 10 survivors and scholars of the Holocaust who spoke yesterday in Manhattan before an audience of 600 at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.