What was going on when I was born?

The Islanders defeated the Devils, 7-1, at the Nassau Coliseum tonight as Clark Gillies and Denis Potvin had two goals each. Wayne Merrick, Duane Sutter and Brent Sutter got the other goals for the Islanders. All the Islander goals except Potvin's second goal, the last of the game, came aganst Glenn (Chico) Resch, the Devils' goalie, formerly with the Islanders. He was replaced by Shawn MacKenzie 9 minutes 42 seconds into the last period.

A considerable body of opinion in Western Europe is opposed to deployment on the continent of any nuclear missiles and, in particular, the 572 cruise and Pershings that the North Atlantic allies propose to install next year. Last week, after the House defeated MX production and basing plans, the Reagan Administration was more concerned than ever about allied solidarity.

Sharply rising prices for gas and electricity, cuts in welfare benefits and rising long-term unemployment are making more people than ever fall behind on their utility bills, leading to record numbers of utility shutoffs. There will be 300,000 involuntary gas disconnections this heating season as against 260,000 last year, according to a survey of state public utility commissions and utilities by the Citizen/Labor Energy Coalition, a nonprofit consumer group. ''There's just a lot more people going into this winter without any fuel than we've ever had in the past,'' said Charles Hill, managing attorney for the National Consumer Law Center in Washingon. ''There's going to be a lot more people doubling up; there's going to be more people using their oven, and if this is a cold winter there's going to be a great number of people in a great deal of trouble.''

The $5.5 billion gas tax and highway repair bill trucking through Congress hit a little pothole in the Senate last week. A group of conservative Republicans mounted a filibuster on the merits - Reaganomics-style.

Who needs another number in these days of access codes, credit cards, and digital everything? Unfortunately, the people of Essex, Conn., do, officials there believe, to make it easier for emergency and service vehicles to locate residences in the growing community. Ellis Baker, a retired industrial engineer, was named chairman of a special committee to organize numbering houses in the town, whose populaton is 5,200, up about 100 percent in the last 10 years.

THE LONGEST WAR Israel in Lebanon. By Jacobo Timerman. Translated from the Spanish by Miguel Acoca. 167 pp. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. $11.95. FROM Argentina, where he had been imprisoned and tortured as a champion of human rights and as a Jew, a country where people were disappearing daily never to be found, where generals who turned to Israel for elaborate weapons systems still suspected Israel's Prime Minister Menachem Begin of secretly supporting the Montonero terrorists - from this Argentina of mindless brutality and repression, Jacobo Timerman immigrated to Israel in 1979. He was an old-time Zionist. On his arrival he announced, ''I have finally come home.'' He was given a hero's welcome. Amos Oz, the novelist, asked Mr. Timerman about his plans. Mr. Timerman said he wanted to be happy, something he had never been. Mr. Oz replied that human beings do not need to be happy, nor can they be. The exchange between the two writers was probably a bit playful. Mr. Timerman, however, would remember it, thinking that only an Israeli could say this with such ease, such coolness, and at the same time be so young, good-looking and successful.