What was going on when I was born?

Air Forbes Won, a handsome colt who began his career only six weeks ago, wore down Shimatoree with a stretch drive that was more taxing and less impressive than anyone had expected to win the $175,200 Wood Memorial by a neck yesterday at Aqueduct. It was the fourth victory without a loss for Air Forbes Won, who paid $3.20 for $2 to win as the 3-5 favorite. Laser Light was third, 2 1/4 lengths behind Shimatoree and a head in front of Wolfie's Rascal in the field of 10 3-year-olds. Air Forbes Won covered the mile and an eighth under Angel Cordero in 1:51 over a fast track - the second-slowest winning time in the last 30 of the 58 runnings of the Wood. Cordero was under orders to work the colt past the wire, and he was timed in 2 minutes 6 seconds for a mile and a quarter, the Kentucky Derby distance. Yesterday morning, Cupecoy's Joy, a New York-bred filly who is being seriously considered for the Derby, went the same distance in 2:02 2/5, a brilliant move that was the talk of the clockers' stand.

President Reagan said today that ''nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought'' but that peace depended on public support for a continuing American military buildup. In the third of a series of radio speeches, the President associated himself with the goals of groups seeking a nuclear freeze but said that instituting a Transcript of address, page 35. freeze now only ''perpetuates current disparities'' to the disfavor of the United States. Mr. Reagan's five-minute speech from the Presidential retreat at Camp David seemed aimed at the growing moves toward arms control in the nation, and in particular at the Ground Zero movement, which is to begin on Sunday a week of educating the American people on the horrors of nuclear war.

-------------------------------------------------------------------- Mike Nichols, the theater and film director, is one of the producers of the musical ''Annie.'' By MIKE NICHOLS ''Annie'' will be five years old this Wednesday. It doesn't seem that long. In September of 1976 Lewis and Jay Allen, our friends and neighbors in Connecticut, told my wife and me that they had seen a wonderful show at the Goodspeed Opera House and that we should see it if possible. ''It's about Little Orphan Annie,'' said Lewis. There was a long pause. I don't know what my expression was, but my wife looked as though a small domestic animal had just relieved itself on her foot. ''It's better than it sounds,'' said Jay. ''It's a musical and F.D.R. is in it. He sings.'' Another long pause. ''Well,'' I lied, ''we'll certainly try and get over there.''

Blue is the color of the headquarters of the Estee Lauder group, from the midnight blue elevator banks to the blue walls, blue carpets and blue-and-white overstuffed sofas of the reception area. Blue is the personal trademark of Estee Lauder, as pink was Elizabeth Arden's. And just as surely as Mrs. Lauder has nailed her color to the company's mast, she has stamped her personal imprint on the group, by some measures the most successful cosmetics company in the United States. Last week, with a fanfare it normally reserves for a new body lotion, the group announced some executive changes. Leonard Lauder, the 49-year-old president, also became chief executive officer; his brother, Ronald Lauder, 38, executive vice president, assumed the additional title of chairman of the company's substantial overseas operations. As befits a cosmetics business, however, there were signs that the changes were mainly skin-deep. Although the entire family granted one of its rare interviews to publicize the promotion of the ''sweet boys,'' as their fond mother described them, Mrs. Lauder also made it clear that she is not stepping down anytime soon from her active chairmanship, nor is her husband, Joseph, withdrawing from management of the group's factories. ''What we are doing is setting the stage for the next 20 years,'' said Ronald Lauder.

Private analysts say that this week's first official G.N.P. estimate may show that the Government's economists were quite prescient when they said in March the economy fell 4.5 percent last quarter. A larger-than-expected inventory liquidation in March was largely responsible for the size of the drop, says Donald Ratajczak, director of economic forecasting at Georgia State University. However, in spite of the run-off, the economy is continuing to decline this month, Mr. Ratajczak says. An inventory buildup could begin sometime in May, he says, but the pace will not be sufficient to prevent the economy from falling 2 percent this quarter, its third consecutive dip.

WAITING FOR THE BARBARIANS By J. M. Coetzee. 156 pp. New York: Penguin Books. Paper, $3.95. A GREAT commanding subject haunts the South African imagination, yet this subject can also turn into a kind of tyranny, close, oppressive, even destructive. Imagine what it must be like to live as a serious writer in South Africa: an endless clamor of news about racial injustice, the feeling that one's life is mortgaged to a society gone rotten with hatred, an indignation that exhausts itself into depression, the fear that one's anger may overwhelm and destroy one's fiction. And except for silence or emigration, there can be no relief. About all these matters J.M. Coetzee, a South African writer in his early forties, has evidently thought deeply. His earlier novel ''In the Heart of the Country'' was a study of social and sexual entanglements between whites and blacks that showed patches of high talent but finally broke down under the weight of emotionally overwrought Faulknerian prose. But in his new novel, ''Waiting for the Barbarians,'' Mr. Coetzee has found a narrative strategy for controlling the tension between subject and author.

-------------------------------------------------------------------- Roger Copeland teaches at Oberlin College and is co-editor of the anthology ''Dance Theory and Criticism'' to be published by Oxford University Press later this year. By ROGER COPELAND Last weekend at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Pennsylvania Ballet performed a program devoted entirely to the work of women choreographers: Doris Humphrey, Isadora Duncan, Senta Driver and Loyce Houlton. At a time when increased attention is being focused on the historical achievements of women in a variety of fields - as well as on the obstacles that have prevented these achievements from being more plentiful and more prominent -one can understand the Pennsylvanians desire to enlist in the service of this cause. The irony, of course, is that in the dance world at least, there is little need for this sort of consciousness. In contemporary dance, women have been not only prominent, but dominant. The other major arts trace their lineage to founding fathers. But here, the central figures are founding mothers: Isadora Duncan, Loie Fuller, Ruth St. Denis, Doris Humphrey, Martha Graham, and among the post-modern generation, Yvonne Rainer, Trisha Brown, Lucinda Childs, Twyla Tharp, and Laura Dean.

MORE and more, teen-agers are taking over sports to the point where 2 0-year-olds who have never been champions are dismissed as over the h ill. And in reaching the top, many of these athletes say that the p ressures that supposedly endanger them often do not exist or are s elf-created, that the enemy usually is not the pressure from others b ut from themselves. The successful teen-agers are usually female, and the new wave of their success is no more evident anywhere than in women's tennis. Last year, for example, 18-year-old Tracy Austin won her second United States Open title in three years; 16-year-old Andrea Jaeger rose to the No. 4 ranking in the world; 15-year-old Kathy Horvath won a Grand Prix tournament, and 14-year-old Kathy Rinaldi became a French Open quarterfinalist. Last month, 16-year-old Elaine Zayak won the world figure-skating championship. Two weeks ago, in the national short-course swimming championships, 15-year-old Tiffany Cohen swept the three distance freestyle finals for women and 16-year-old Jeff Kostoff the same three for men. The best female gymnasts in the United States are 17-year-old Julianne McNamara and 15-year-old Tracee Talavera.

Tommy John, who is usually one constant in the Yankees' gyrating world, lost today for the second time this week as the Detroit Tigers scored early and went on to a 5-3 victory. It was a short and turbulent afternoon for John, who at age 38 is the team's senior member. He had a lot of trouble with the Tigers' talent for outrunning bunts. But he had the most trouble with their new talent for the long ball, particularly Enos Cabell, who homered in the first inning and hit a two-run double in the second.

POLITICALLY rooted in New York City, Mayor Koch offered a preview of his suburban campaign style and substance as he sought the support of Nassau and Suffolk Democratic politicians last week. As he is doing throughout the state in his bid for the Democratic nomination for Governor, the Mayor was host at cocktail parties for a total of 150 key Nassau and Suffolk Democrats at separate sessions in Westbury and Hauppauge. Except for sporadic attacks on his Democratic competitor, Lieut. Gov. Mario M. Cuomo, the Mayor was considerably lower-keyed than most Long Islanders are accustomed to on the nightly news. He was cordially if not effusively greeted at both sessions - a reflection of the neutrality of the two Democratic county organizations and a probable split in the two organizations.

DANBURY THERE were fire extinguishers, but the prisoners did not know how to use them. There was an emergency fire hose, but the guards did not know it, and the inmates could not use it because it was in a locked cabinet. There was an emergency lighting system, but it was wired wrong and did not work. There were at least five air packs for use in the deadly thick smoke, but guards could find only one, and did not know how to use that. And the warped door to the prison dormitory had stuck often, and had been reported, but not fixed, and while choking men screamed to get out, it stuck again. The fire at the Danbury Federal Correctional Institution on July 7, 1977, ended in the death of five inmates and the injury of 74 other men - all but six of them inmates. The fault is the Government's, ruled Judge T.F. Gilroy Daly, of the United States District Court, in May 1981. He is currently considering the damage claims of 54 inmates.

The Soviet Government's press agency Tass quoted Leonid I. Brezhnev tonight as having rejected President Reagan's suggestion that they hold informal talks in June in New York during a United Nations disarmament conference. Mr. Brezhnev proposed instead that they hold a full-fledged summit meeting in October in either Finland or Switzerland. The Soviet leader's remarks came in what Tass described as a conversation with an unidentified reporter of Pravda, the Communist Party daily. In Washington, the White House said it would study Mr. Brezhnev's idea for an autumn meeting, but it added that President Reagan still hoped the Soviet leader would come to New York in June for an initial get-together. (Page 32.)