What was going on when I was born?

The International Brotherhood of Teamsters, once almost impervious to challenges from the trucking industry and from internal opponents, is being confronted by major difficulties. Dissident teamsters say that the leadership is distracted by legal battles, including criminal charges against the international president, and that its organizing efforts are lagging. Moreover, critics say the union has done little to fight for the job security and safety issues that are important to its members. The union's problems come at a time of ferment in the trucking industry, which is in the throes of Government deregulation and faces lower profits because of the nationwide recession. It was in this context that the teamsters accepted contract concessions earlier this year, concessions that a large number of unionized companies now have reportedly rejected as insufficient.

ALTHOUGH increasingly selective and expensive, private day schools in this area are becoming increasingly popular. Enrollment is rising even as the student population at both public and parochial schools in the county is declining, and despite an uncertain economy. While the county continues to attract young families drawn by the promise of good public schools, there is growing evidence that some families are choosing a community for its proximity to good private day schools. Figures released by the state's Department of Education show public school enrollment in the county is down 4.4 percent from last year, and parochial school enrollment dropped 3.4 percent. At the county's nonpublic schools, however, which include schools with some relgious affiliation and independent institutions, enrollments have increased by 8.8 percent this year. Measured in real numbers, the increase is small, representing an enrollment jump of 619 students. However, the trend has been steady for the last several years and was particularly evident this year.

British troops returned in force to the Falkland Islands for the first time in six weeks Friday night, destroying Argentine aircraft and military installations in a remote part of the archipelago, the Ministry of Defense disclosed today. The ministry described the action as ''a raid, not an invasion.'' It said that several Argentine turboprop Pucara warplanes were destroyed on a grass airstrip. Unofficial reports put the number at about 10 and said British frigates and destroyers bombarded the area while the raid was taking place.

DURING the years of protest against the building of the Shoreham nuclear power plant, one concern in particular has haunted the people who live in the East End. As picket signs have put it: ''Evacuate - But How?'' Many critics of the plant maintain to this day that in the event of a nuclear accident at the plant, the orderly evacuation of the surrounding population would be impossible. But last week, the Long Island Lighting Company asked the New York State Disaster Preparedness Commission to approve an emergency response plan for Shoreham that not only says orderly evacuation is possible, but also states how long it would take. This document asserts that 159,959 persons - the estimated summer population in 1985 of an area within 10 miles of the plant -can be evacuated in poor weather in 6.7 hours. The plan acknowledges that in the case of a winter snow or ice storm, evacuation would be impossible, and that the population would have to be advised to stay indoors until the emergency at the nuclear plant had passed. The plan is silent on the health consequences of such a situation.

Another round of hefty tuition increases at colleges and universities around the country has ushered in the era of the $50,000 bachelor's degree. It has also suggested that educators and legislators are moving to shift a greater percentage of the cost of higher education onto students. Private colleges are typically raising tuition and fees for the 1982-83 academic year by 12 to 16 percent. This is slightly below last year's record increases but still about twice the current rate of inflation. The major reasons cited for the increases include efforts to catch up in the areas of faculty salaries and maintenance, where spending has lagged behind the inflation rate in recent years, and the need to cover the gaps left by the Reagan Administration's cuts in Federal tuition assistance.

WHENEVER Philip Segneri passes the vacant spot on the Post Road in Westport where his restaurant, La Normandie, stood for the past 14 years, he avoids dwelling on the painful fact that the business he was forced to shut down in February is now no more than a pile of rubble, dust and memories. Only a few blocks away, a similar story has unfolded. There is now only an empty automobile showroom where Earl Walmark, owner of Longshore Chevrolet, used to run his dealership. Also stalled by the prolonged weak-buying climate and high-cost financing, he closed in March.

If there is a perfect 10 in the movies today, it may be Aileen Quinn, a little girl who seems as though she was born to be just that age. She will be 11 in a month, and right now, with her turned-down white anklets, turned-up snub nose, hailstorm of freckles and chubby cheeks, Aileen is quite simply, the epitome of kid: friendly, full of fidgets, with a patina of precocity over a personality that is pure child. She is also, just at the moment, the star of a $40 million allsinging, all-dancing extravaganza of a movie. At the center of the screen version of the Broadway hit ''Annie,'' which opens next Friday at Loews Astor Plaza and other theaters in New York City following a benefit premiere for PBS at Radio City Music Hall tomorrow, there needed to be a kid who was somehow the quintessence of kid. After casting directors cast about for a year, in a search likened to the one for an actress to play Scarlett O'Hara, they found Aileen: more spunk than sugar and spice, more pugnacious than pretty. She thinks it was neat that they picked her to portray the legendary orphan adopted by a fabulously wealthy financier. Neat is one of Aileen's favorite words. Fun is the other. Making a movie was fun; so were Carol Burnett and Albert Finney, with whom she co-starred. So are Pac-Man, the Pizza Hut in her hometown of Yardley, Pa., playing soccer and riding bikes with her friends at Grey Nun Academy there, and having room service breakfast ordered up in the Essex House, which is where she is giving interviews with her mother, Helenann.

Almost as well known in Brooklyn as the intersection of Bedford and Stuyvesant Streets is that of Fulton Street and Nostrand Avenue - another hub of the Bedford-Stuyvesant community and only two blocks from the headquarters of the Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation. Ever since the corporation's commercial complex opened in 1977 on Fulton a block from Nostrand, efforts have been made to complement new construction by sprucing up store facades to help attract businesses and customers.

Gordon Smiley was killed early this afternoon when his race car veered directly into the wall during a practice lap before an attempt to qualify for the May 30 Indianapolis 500. Not long after other drivers had created records with each lap in the first hour of qualifying, Smiley, who was 33 years old, died instantly when his March racer, powered by a Cosworth engine, lost control during a second warm-up lap as it came out of a turn at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. At the end of the third turn, at the northeast corner of the 2.5-mile oval, the rear of the car began to veer slightly to the right. A television tape showed that Smiley apparently tried to correct the racer but failed. The car turned to the right, directly into the wall.

The four-game winning streak of the Yankees, their longest of the season, came to an end today when the Oakland A's scored four runs in the first inning off Rudy May and went on to a 7-3 victory. Billy Martin, the manager of the A's and twice the manager of the Yankees, thereby took a lead of three games to two this season over his former employer. The A's have been slumping lately with six losses in eight games, and their pitchers have been surrendering more than eight runs a game, with no complete games in the last 10. But this time, Rick Langford went the distance, holding the Yankees to six hits, and Martin expressed pleas Mets beat Dodgers, 6-4. Page 6. ure later that the booing had died down in the Oakland Coliseum. ''I'm glad we won,'' he said. ''We've got 21 people coming over for dinner tonight and, if we'd lost, the host wouldn't have been there.''

RIVERHEAD BREEDERS of thoroughbred horses are fencing in farmland on the Island's North Fork at a brisk pace. Far from being alarmed, most local officials applaud the coming of the horse farms - unimagined a decade ago - as a highly favorable development. The breeders keep the land open and pay substantial taxes. With luck, they may someday endow the North Fork with an international reputation as a home of championship race horses. Standing squarely in the center of the Island's horse farm activity is the Big E Farm on Sound Avenue in Riverhead's Northville hamlet. Established in 1980, the Big E now covers 350 acres and boasts a fence of oak slats and pine posts that runs five miles along the perimeter of former potato fields. The Big E's owner, Robert Entenmann, one of three brothers who made Entenmann bakery products famous before selling the business three years ago, said he was here to stay.

CONRAIL'S Cos Cob power station is being designated a National Historic Engineering Landmark. The designation, made by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, is for the ''pioneering achievement'' of the original 1907 electrification system of the railroad's New Haven line. It will be bestowed at a ceremony Saturday at the Cos Cob train station. The New Haven line, formerly the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad, will thus join seven other railroad-related engineering landmarks, among them the New York City subway system, designated by the two engineers' groups.