What was going on when I was born?

IF Mayor Koch has his way, Long Island residents, along with other suburbanites, will soon have to pay more for the privilege of working in New York City. But before the Mayor has his way, he will have to overcome formidable, well-entrenched opposition from suburban legislators of both parties, and most legislators say that his proposal - for a $100 million increase in the income tax on commuters - is not going anywhere. State Senator Norman J. Levy, Republican of Merrick, called the plan an ''unbelievable deja vu'' and suggested that Mr. Koch would be wise to withdraw it before it ever gets to Albany. Arthur J. Kremer, Democrat of Long Beach and chairman of the Assembly's Ways and Means Committee, said: ''The chance of the commuter tax passing in either house is very remote.''

In his first post-election speech outside the White House, President Reagan staked out the rhetorical ground from which he would prefer to conduct the 1983 spending - especially the defense spending - debate. ''Propaganda'' that his proposed five-year, $1.6 trillion military buildup and his 1981 supply-side tax cut have produced estimated deficits of $200 billion or more through 1986 is ''real dipsy doodle,'' Mr. Reagan told savings bankers meeting in New Orleans last week. Nondefense spending, Mr. Reagan said, was the cause, and would have to bear the burden.

IT WAS a bold break with a century-old tradition. In 1972, a Congress roused by growing urban unrest voted to lump together an amalgam of obsolete military emplacements, underfinanced state parks and decrepit beachfront facilities around New York Harbor to form America's newest national park: Gateway National Recreation Area. The key concept supporting the outlandish proposal to develop a national park that lacked the overpowering beauty of Yellowstone (established in 1872) or the awesomeness of the Grand Canyon was to bring ''parks to the people'' - to the millions in the Greater New York-New Jersey metropolitan area who would never visit the western parks. Essential to the fulfillment of that promise was a system that would make the 26,000 acres of Gateway accessible to the millions of recreation seekers in the region. Today, 10 years after Gateway was approved by Congress, the park's four units in New Jersey and New York are among the most heavily used in the national park system. However, they are still beyond reach for many more people because of the lack of a viable transportation system.

On Oct. 27, Judge Martin Nigro of Superior Court was named as a one-man grand jury to investigate allegations of illegal dumping and storage of hazardous waste by three Connecticut companies, including Environmental Waste Removal Inc. of Waterbury. The other companies were the Connecticut Treatment Corporation of Bristol and Tri-Chem Environmental Industries Inc. of Stamford. On the same day, at the request of Austin J. McGuigan, the Chief State's Attorney, Governor O'Neill directed that legal proceedings be initiated to enforce a cleanup order against the Waterbury company. The Governor further called for ''closure of the plant until it is in compliance with all state and Federal requirements.''

Still gracing both sides of East 73d Street in the block between Lexington and Third Avenues and forming a kind of mews there are 15 buildings dating from the turn-of-the-century or before. They were not included in the East Side Historic District, which runs roughly from Fifth to Lexington Avenues between 59th and 79th Streets, but they were officially recognized as city landmarks by the Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1979.

TRENTON GOVERNOR KEAN probed and found a weak spot last weak in the united front usually put up by the Democratic leadership in the State Legislature. The Governor had been sharply attacked by the Assembly Speaker, Alan J. Karcher, Democrat of Sayreville, who accused Mr. Kean of having left the state ''technically insolvent'' because of his fiscal policies and his refusal to support an increase in the state income tax. The Governor, who is trying to come up with a formula to close a projected $60 million gap in the current budget and a projected shortfall of $200 million to $400 million next year, wondered aloud at a news conference if Mr. Karcher was speaking for all Democrats in the Legislature or just for himself. Newsmen contacted the Senate President, Carmen A. Orechio, Democrat of Nutley, who is as introspective as Mr. Karcher is outgoing, and what they uncovered was a sharp difference of opinion between the leader of the Senate and the leader of the Assembly.

The North Shore of Long Island is known as Nassau County's Gold Coast, so when a for-sale sign goes up on waterfront property there, it should come as a surprise to no one that the price is going to be high. Still, the asking price for acreage at Land's End, a new development in Lattingtown between Sheep Lane and the Creek Club, may be an eye-opener to some.

Could it be possible that Lou Carnesecca, the St. John's basketball coach, will finally enjoy a Thanksgiving dinner? He insists there have always been too many coaching worries to allow that to happen. But after today's 78-74 overtime victory over North Carolina in the Tip-Off Classic, the opening game of the college season, there must be fewer worries for Carnesecca. The Redmen were behind by 5 points with 1 minutes 46 seconds to play in regulation time before they tied the score on a 15-foot jump shot by Kevin Williams with four seconds to go and then took an early overtime lead that was never lost. For these Redmen, a group that is still trying to discover how much it can achieve, the value of a victory over the defending national champion could not be measured so soon. ''All that talk about just wanting to do well, that's just what you say,'' said Billy Goodwin, the senior swingman. ''We wanted to win it. We wanted to win it bad. We wanted to know we're as good as we think we are.''

Aweek after the event, little doubt lingers in Moscow that the fourth leadership change in Soviet history went smoothly and that Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov has assumed a position of unassailable primacy and power. By most accounts, Mr. Andropov grasped Leonid I. Brezhnev's mantle with a minimum of fuss and delay. One widespread version has it that at the Politburo meeting after Mr. Brezhnev's death, Dmitri F. Ustinov, the Defense Minister, rose first and advanced Mr. Andropov's candidacy, effectively precluding debate and dissension. The powerful comrades who might have had different ideas - Mikhail Suslov, Andrei Kirilenko, Arvid Pelshe, Mr. Brezhnev himself - had been eliminated by death, disgrace or disease; what followed was ritual. Once the Politburo had named its man, there could be no further debate. In Soviet politics, power is concentrated at the top. Speculation has now turned to how Mr. Andropov will consolidate and use his authority. From the little that is known, he did not reach the top by chance or as a compromise candidate, as Mr. Brezhnev did 18 years before. Mr. Andropov struggled for the job. Presumably he knows what he wants to do with it.

Ilda Leal, a small, shy, 27-year-old woman, is fairly typical of the Mexican women, now numbering in the thousands, who are coming across the border every year to have their babies in the United States. They come, many of them, so the baby will be born an American citizen, with all the advantages that that brings. But the practice also raises thorny problems, ranging from a court case over deportation of parents through fears of unregulated care for the mothers to charges that some of the babies are being sold in a black market. Mrs. Leal is hesitant at first, but she grows talkative as she looks on her fine boy, Abiel Leal Jr., dozing and gurgling on the bottom bunk of a double-decker bed in the cramped but spotless fiveroom house of Margarita Garcia. Mrs. Garcia, a stocky, strong woman of 47 whose broad face is usually split by an equally broad smile, is a lay midwife, or a ''partera,'' as she is called in Spanish, the only tongue that she and most of her clients speak. 'They Have Better Rights' After Mrs. Leal became pregnant, she began seeing a doctor in Mexico, she said through an interpreter, ''but then got the idea to have the baby in the United States, because they have better rights, protect the children more.''

BOBBY CREMINS of Georgia Tech was one of many coaches who opposed the use of 24-, 30-or 4 5-second shot clocks last May, in a National Collegiate Athletic A ssociation Rules Committee questionnaire. Of the 394 coaching b allots cast for the use of the 45-second clock, Lou Carnesecca of S t. John's was one of 119 in favor. When the college basketball season gets fully under way Friday night, Cremins will be playing all his Atlantic Coast Conference games with a 30-second clock and a 3-point basket for shots beyond 19 feet. Carnesecca, whose team plays in the Big East, will play all conference games with a 45-second clock and no 3-point field goal. The A.C.C. and the Big East will be among the eight conferences experimenting with shot clocks of either 30 or 45 seconds. Nine conferences will use the 3-point basket at distances ranging from 19 feet to 21 feet 3 inches.

BECAUSE of the special nature of the New York cooperative market, tenants can sometimes make a bundle ofc ash when a rental building is converted to cooperative ownership. J ust for being in the right place at the right time, tenants with no i nterest in buying their apartments and no interest in remaining as r enters in the building can earn substantial sums by selling their s o-called insider rights. This is an aberration of the real-estate market that occurs in New York State because the law has the effect of encouraging developers to offer apartments to tenants at reduced, or below market prices. These ''insider prices'' mean that tenants can usually buy their apartments at one-half to two-thirds of market value.