What was going on when I was born?

Philip C. Habib, President Reagan's special envoy, met here twice today with Prime Minister Menachem Begin, then left for Beirut, apparently on the verge of agreement on a plan to end the fighting in the Lebanese capital. A high-ranking Israeli official said this evening that two points remained outstanding, but he said neither involved questions of principle and both could be resolved by Thursday, when the negotiator is scheduled to return to Jerusalem after consultations with Lebanese officials. What now appears to be the final stage of the plan would have a multinational peacekeeping force arrive in Beirut to supervise the evacuation of 6,000 to 9,000 members of the Palestine Liberation Organization. 'Still a Sticking Point' The P.L.O. has been asking that the first contingent of that force, a 200-member French unit, arrive as the evacuation begins. But the Israelis, fearful that such a contingent of foreign soldiers could be used by the guerrillas as a screen to forestall departure, want the bulk of the P.L.O. gone before the peacekeepers arrive,

After the day-to-day grind of running a coffee shop for 21 years, Andrew Tegerides told his wife, Christina, early this year that he felt depressed. He was tired. ''Retire,'' she told him. ''You deserve it. Take the summer off. We live comfortably. So we're not millionaires.'' Well, now they are millionaires, and Mrs. Tegerides laughed as she told the story yesterday at the office of the New York State Lottery in the World Trade Center.

The Phillips Petroleum Company and the Union Pacific Corporation have displayed more than a routine interest in discussing the purchase of the Cities Service Company, sources close to all three companies said yesterday. The Allied Corporation, moreover, which eliminated itself earlier as a buyer of Cities Service, is understood to have a continuing interest in buying what insiders described as ''a piece of the company.'' The first litigation against Cities Service's directors in the wake of Gulf Oil's withdrawal of its merger offer last Friday also emerged yesterday: Sidney Wolgin, a Rydal, Pa., businessman charged them with failing to consider the Mesa Petroleum Company as a merger partner, wasting corporate assets by paying Mesa $55 a share for 4.1 million Cities Service shares and manipulating the market by planning to buy up to 20 million shares of company stock.

The nation's retail sales rebounded a bit in July, rising by 1 percent after plunging 3.3 percent in the previous month, the Government reported today. However, the July sales pace was still weak and gave little indication of an economic recovery. ''The numbers are not so low that we're going to say we're not going to have a recovery,'' said Sandra Shaber, director of consumer economics for Chase Econometrics in Bala Cynwyd, Pa. ''But if we don't get more significant improvement in August and September, it would be very bad news indeed,'' she added.

''First was seven, because his lucky number is 437. Then 12, for the month he was born.

ROOM By SHEILA MARY EBY RECENTLY Sydney Silver, aged 12, decided that she did not care to sleep on a bed. She dragged a discarded refrigerator box into her bedroom, turned it on its side and slipped her old camp sleeping bag into it. Cutting windows in the cardboard and suspending a reading light overhead, she created a cozy if quirky room within a room. Her 15-year-old sister, Samantha, took a critical look at her bedroom, too. Its parquet floors and tiled fireplace had never particularly impressed her. With her four-poster canopy bed newly dismantled, she sleeps on a mattress and box spring plunked on the floor. When teen-agers start restyling their rooms they have no shortage of unorthodox ideas. Childhood furniture is sent into storage. Clouds and rainbows are painted on the ceiling. Posters and wild color combinations take over the walls. Parents are hard-pressed to explain such idiosyncratic preferences. ''Their rooms look like crash pads,'' said Marcia Silver, Sydney and Samantha's mother. Her husband, Gary, who scrupulously renovated the family's Victorian town house in the Park Slope section of Brooklyn, has similar feelings.

In a review yesterday of the Japanese movie ''The Family'' (Karei Naru Ichikozo), the director was incorrectly named. The director is Satsuo Yamamoto.

The American Telephone and Telegraph Company's 22 local operating companies would retain some of their most basic businesses and customers would get a break on future rate increases if the changes requested by Judge Harold Greene yesterday in the proposed settlement of the antitrust suit against A.T.&T. go through. Those were some of the early conclusions drawn by telephone industry analysts following Judge Greene's ruling, which asked for 10 modifications to the antitrust settlement announced Jan. 8 by the telephone company and the Justice Department. The most significant changes for the Bell companies were three alterations that would most likely provide them with millions of dollars of additional revenues and help them hold down telephone rates, analysts said. Under the changes, the units, to be divested under the antitrust settlement, would be allowed to keep the lucrative Yellow Pages business rather than cede it to A.T.&T., as the January settlement stated. They would also retain the right to market customer premise equipment - such as telephones and private switching systems - though they could not make the gear.

Israeli tanks moved into strategic positions in northern Lebanon today as Israeli planes and artillery shelled Palestinian areas of west Beirut for the third consecutive day. But officials here, in Jerusalem and in Washington voiced optimism that accord would be reached on the plan for Palestinian withdrawal from west Beirut that is being negotiated by Philip C. Habib, the American envoy. The Israeli advance north of Beirut involved some 40 tanks that moved along the coast highway beyond the port of Junieh to the area of the ancient harbor of Byblos, which bears the modern name of Jubeil. It is the northernmost point reached by the Israeli forces, and the advance puts them into position for a thrust farther north, toward Tripoli, or east into Lebanon's central mountain range.

With neither President Reagan nor Western Europe showing signs of retreating, a collision over trade with the Soviet Union could come as early as next week, some European officials believe. The differences are deep between the President and the European allies over Mr. Reagan's decision June 18 to tighten economic sanctions against the Soviets for their role in the repression in Poland. His ruling extended American export controls not only to the foreign activities of United States companies, but also to foreign companies that use American technological licenses to manufacture products of their own. The controls were intended to deny United States technology for the Soviet Union's natural gas pipeline to Western Europe that the Europeans want to diversify their energy sources and to provide jobs for their depressed industries.

A Federal judge accepted the framework for A.T.& T.'s antitrust settlement, but insisted major changes be made before he approved it. They included a seven-year ban on any electronic information service, and a stipulation that the operating companies continue to sell equipment and publish the Yellow Pages. (Page A1.) A.T.&T. is likely to accept the changes, analysts said, because their disadvantages are outweighed by the chance for the company to restructure itself and enter new communications businesses. (D14.) Consumers will get a break on future telephone rate increases if the judge's proposed changes are accepted, industry analysts said. (A1.) The changes would also encourage newspapers to develop their own electronic information services, according to publishers. (D14.) The judge who ruled in the case, Harold H. Greene, had to define his own role, and chose an active, creative one. (D15.)

Judge Harold H. Greene of Federal District Court today accepted the basic framework of the proposed antitrust settlement between the American Telephone and Telegraph Company and the Justice Department, but he insisted on major modifications before granting formal approval. In a 178-page opinion, Judge Greene concluded that it was ''plainly in the public interest'' for A.T.& T. to give up its 22 wholly owned local telephone subsidiaries, while keeping its long-distance division, its manufacturing subsidiary and its research laboratories. But the judge insisted that A.T.&T. and the Justice Department could not carry out the reorganization of the Bell System by themselves without his participation. Specifically, he said that he must be allowed to review and approve each step of the divestiture to make certain that the local operating companies, once on their own, are financially ''viable.'' Other Modifications Sought Other major modifications sought by Judge Greene were these: - A.T.&T. must be prohibited from using its equipment to offer any kind of electronic information service ''until the risk of its domination of that field has abated.'' This restriction, sought by the newspaper industry, can be lifted by the court in seven years. The original antitrust settlement, announced Jan. 8, would have permitted A.T.&T. to enter this field.