What was going on when I was born?

The sensation stopped being scary a long time ago. When Clyde Drexler was a 6-foot-1-inch, 14-year-old who had not yet known the feeling of reaching the rim of a basketball hoop, as he molded his game in a playground behind Albert Thomas Junior High in the south side of Houston, he went into the air with two taller players in front of him. ''They both jumped,'' Drexler said, ''and it scared me.'' That happened right about the time Drexler first developed the ability to slam a basketball through the playground's twisted metal hoops. ''The goals were 11 feet,'' he said. ''I guess they didn't want anyone to break it. After I dunked on the 11-foot goals, I figured I could dunk on the 10-foot goals.''

Western European governments signaled to Washington this weekend their view that Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko's rejection of its interim proposal limiting medium-range missiles was not likely to be the Soviet leadership's last word. Senior officials of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization reached by telephone in Brussels said Saturday, after Mr. Gromyko's news conference, that his rejection of Mr. Reagan's new proposals for limiting medium-range missiles in Europe was disappointing but not surprising. ''As far as we know Soviet negotiating tactics,'' a senior alliance official said, ''it's typical for them to come down hard at the start. But this does not necessarily mean it's the end.''

At least 900 pounds of gold chains, valued at $6 million, were reported stolen from a Fifth Avenue wholesale jewelry company in what the police said yesterday was one of the largest thefts ever of jewelry in New York City. The theft occurred in the second-floor offices of Goldheart International Ltd., at 565 Fifth Avenue, between 6 P.M. on Friday and 7 P.M. on Saturday, the police said. They said the offices, which are near East 46th Street, were entered from an adjoining office through a hole made in the wall with a sledgehammer. The sledgehammer, the police said, may also have been used to break into the vault where the chains were kept.

The toll booth at the entrance to the state park at Utah Lake near Provo now stands 20 feet offshore, and wind-driven waves break over the tops of picnic tables. And on the south shore of the Great Salt Lake beaches and parking lots have gone under, and workers have piled sandbags around buildings to keep back the rising waters. The Great Salt Lake, fed by record rain and snow over 18 months, has crept to its highest level in more than half a century. Flooding in low-lying areas has already caused at least $15 million in property damage, and state officials fear that the worst is yet to come.

Sidney Lowe and Dereck Whittenburg, North Carolina State's superb guards, ''look like they should be playing in a bar league in New York,'' according to their coach, Jim Valvano. ''They look more like a pair of linebackers than the best guards in the land.'' But Valvano, who was born in New York City, and sounds like a coach from a bar league, said: ''I've got to convince people that Sidney's the best point guard in the country. Whit knows how to make impressions 'cause he's the shooter, and that gets attention. But the two of them are much better than anyone gives them credit for because of appearances. And they know each other's moves so well for so many years.''

For the third time in three years, a grand jury will be asked to bring murder indictments against a nursing home in Galveston County. A special prosecutor for the State Attorney General's office maintains that at least eight patients and perhaps many more were knowingly starved, deprived of medication or allowed to lie in their own filth while the nursing home collected Medicaid fees for care it never provided. Twice before, murder indictments have been brought against the home, and twice they did not reach trial. The first time they were found to be improperly drawn and the second time a judge ruled them unconstitutionally vague and imposed a plea bargain instead. Prosecutor's Zeal Faulted But that was withdrawn and now the matter of Texas v. Autumn Hills Convalescent Centers Inc., a charge of multiple murder in a systematic fraud against the Medicaid system, will be considered again, at the request of a new district attorney.

Energy The possibility of an oil price war and a downward spiral in prices appears to have been averted, largely because of Nigeria's decision last week to hew to OPEC guidelines. Analysts now think current price levels will hold for the rest of the year. (Page D1.)

The polyester industry has fallen on hard times, spurred in large part by the image of the mid-1970's doubleknit suit and changing consumer tastes. Designers have ignored polyester. Retailers shunned it. And consumers made jokes about it. ''There was exceedingly bad styling during the middle 1970's when the knit suit was in fashion,'' said John Weitz, the designer. ''Polyester became associated with a sort of neo-Italian, West Coast cowboy look. And it created a whole world of bad taste. Polyester people. Polyester towns. Polyester hotels.''

The Rangers' season has been at times very good, at times very bad, without ever going too far in either direction. So perhaps it was appropriate that they finished with a perfectly even record: 35 victories, 35 losses and 10 ties. ''It reflects our season just perfectly,'' said Anders Hedberg after the Rangers had played their final regular-season game here today, and suffered their 35th loss, by a 3-0 score to the Washington Capitals. ''We played at a .500 level all year long, basically -sometimes a slump, sometimes a good stretch, but .500 basically,'' said Hedberg. ''And if you'd said, at the beginning of the season, that it would be like that, I'd have said, 'No way.' ''

After months of mounting acrimony among the world's major oil producing nations and fears of a price war that would bring crude oil prices down steeply, a growing number of American oil experts now believe the international price structure has stabilized. This view was buttressed last Thursday when Nigeria, a member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, said that it did not intend to lower its prices. Many had expected Nigeria to cut prices in response to a reduction of 50 cents to 75 cents a barrel proposed earlier in the week by Britain, whose oil is directly competitive with that of the economically depressed West African producer. There are still some experts, however, who believe that Nigeria will not be able to keep its pledge because of the effect of the severe drop in oil revenues on its economy.

The Reagan Administration is devising a broad strategy to counteract what it views as growing anti-American tendencies among younger Europeans, according to Government officials. The target of this strategy is a new generation of European leaders who share none of their parents' experience immediately after World War II, when Americans and Europeans worked closely to form a military alliance and reconstruct Europe's shattered economies. Government and private public-opinion polls show that these young leaders - known here as the ''successor generation'' - have a far less positive image of the United States, partly because their perceptions have been shaped by American involvement in Vietnam and by domestic crises like Watergate. Troublesome Implications Seen Government and private analysts are warning that the emergence of a new, far more skeptical generation of European leaders, if their attitudes persist, has troublesome implications for future cooperation between Western Europe and the United States.

The Justice Department is investigating possible antitrust violations by several large banks and Wall Street firms that specialize in the trading of United States Treasury securities. According to Mark T. Sheehan, a spokesman for the Justice Department, the preliminary investigation is focusing on possible ''antitrust violations in the way that brokers set up access to the dealers.'' At issue is how brokers allow their trading facilities to be used only by a group of firms known as ''reporting dealers.'' This group of three dozen dealer firms and banks report their financial condition to the Federal Reserve and dominate trading in Treasury securities.