What was going on when I was born?

Governor Cuomo has stepped into the strike against the Metro-North Commuter Railroad with a series of statements in the last two weeks, but exactly what the Governor is trying to accomplish is not clear, even to the participants in the negotiations. With 90,000 commuters inconvenienced, according to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, and the talks deadlocked, Mr. Cuomo says he wantsthe strike to end. Beyond that, he describes himself as impartial, insisting he has favored neither side but simply wants both to negotiate. In addition, he is pleading with the Federal Government to take action as the impasse continues.

The highest-ranking Angolan official to visit Washington held an unpublicized meeting this afternoon with Secretary of State George P. Shultz to discuss South Africa's occupation of South-West Africa and the presence of Cuban troops in Angola, Administration officials said. The officials said the visitor, Lieut. Col. Manuel Alexandre Rodrigues, held talks with State Department officials and might meet Vice President Bush on Thursday or Friday. Colonel Rodrigues, who is Interior Minister, is regarded as the No.2 man in Angola. The United States and Angola have no diplomatic relations, and the possibility of establishing ties after a withdrawal of Cuban troops from Angola was also discussed in the last few days, officials said.

The unusual sight of corporate managers being laid off during the recession has helped feed the notion that the ranks of managers are being thinned. But national data do not bear this out. Instead, despite two back-to-back recessions and a widely held belief that management had become swollen and top-heavy, its ranks have continued to grow. By December 1982, there were nearly 9 percent more managers and administrators in the American economy than in January 1980, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This is in sharp contrast to the nearly 1 percent decline in overall employment and the 12 percent drop in blue-collar jobs during the same period. 'Contrasting Economic Worlds' ''After all the discussion about the squeeze on middle management, the striking thing is that management has grown at all,'' said Samuel Ehrenhalt, regional commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics for the New York region. ''It tells us something about the contrasting economic worlds we are moving to, where some groups are going up sharply while others are plummeting.''

The Ford Motor Company earned a profit producing automobiles and trucks in North America in the first quarter of this year, Philip Caldwell, the chairman of Ford, said today. It would be the first time since 1979 that the No.2 auto maker had made money in its basic line of business on this continent, a segment of the company that lost $2.1 billion in 1980 and lesser amounts in the past two years. Mr. Caldwell, in an interview in his office at Ford's headquarters here, did not disclose the size of the profit in the United States and Canada or the company's overall results, other than to say the quarter would be ''comfortably in the black.'' The auto maker reported a loss of $506 million in the United States for the first quarter of 1982, and a loss of $52 million in its Canadian operations in the same period. Other operations were profitable, however, reducing the company's 1982 first-quarter loss to $355 million.

The Scouting column in Sports Pages on Tuesday gave an incorrect date for the Manhattan Island Swim- ming Marathon. It is set for July 24.

Favorable economic news and the growing conviction that interest rates will continue to drop sent the stock market up sharply yesterday, with the Dow Jones industrial average soaring 11.32 points, to close at a record 1,156.64. ''The market's advance today was fueled by the news of strong auto sales in the first 10 days of this month and by the continuing drop in interest rates in the credit markets,'' said Stephen S. Weisglass, president of Ladenburg, Thalmann & Company. Declining interest rates have helped carry the market ahead for the last five sessions. In that period, the Dow average, which is made up of 30 leading companies, has soared 43 points. The former closing high in the Dow of 1,145.90 was set on March 24.

The Flexi-Van Corporation's board of directors gave in to David H. Murdock yesterday, restoring his title as chairman and thereby ending a two-week struggle for control of the company. The action by the directors of thetransportation leasing company was an acknowledgement of the importance of Mr. Murdock's holdings, which have increased to about 42 percent of Flexi-Van's 6 million common shares outstanding from 27 percent at the end of March. Directors also recommended that a new slate of directors selected and approved by Mr. Murdock, who was ousted from the chairmanship last month, be presented to stockholders at the company's annual meeting on May 5. In addition, they terminated pending litigation involving Mr. Murdock and accepted the resignation of Lewis Rubin as chairman. Mr. Rubin had opposed Mr. Murdock's bid.

John S.R. Shad, the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, today urged approval of a bill that would allow assessment of triple damages for insider trading violations. But Mr. Shad indicated to the House Subcommittee on Consumer Protection and Finance that he could accept important changes that might weaken the proposal that the commission voted to support last year. The changes involve inserting a definition of insider trading, which could narrow the scope of prosecutions, and stiffening the legal standard for proving the charge of insider trading. The possible shift in position caught some subcommittee members by surprise.

An article in Business Day yesterday incorrectly reported the roles of the Manufacturers Hanover Trust Company and Chemical Bank in the rescheduling of Baldwin-United Corporation debt. Chemical Bank is acting as agent for creditors of Baldwin-United and the D.H. Baldwin Company, a Baldwin subsidiary. Manufacturers Hanover is agent for creditors of Balunit Inc., another Baldwin subsidiary.

''We strive for unity. I guarantee you a total outreach to every area of this city.''

Mayor-elect Harold Washington today joined Mayor Jane M. Byrne, the son of Richard J. Daley, the brother of the unsuccessful Republican mayoral candidate, Bernard E. Epton, and city religious leaders at a luncheon to urge civic unity after the bitter municipal election. Afterward he spoke at a news conference, his first since his victory Tuesday made him the next Mayor of Chicago, the largest American city to elect a black to that office. Mr. Washington promised to work to calm this racially divided city of three million. ''We strive for unity,'' said the 60-year-old Congressman. ''I guarantee you a total outreach to every area of this city.'' Unity Move Held Necessary Such unity is widely regarded here as the necessary first step after a hard-fought election in which a record number of voters cast ballots that split closely down racial lines.

The Senate Budget Committee tonight finished an initial round of drafting a 1984 Government budget that would spend $851 billion, or $8 billion more than President Reagan proposed, an increase of less than 1 percent. But the Republican chairman of the committee, Senator Pete V. Domenici of New Mexico, said he would be happy to have the committee scale down some of the projected spending on Thursday, when the panel is also to decide how much revenue it thinks the Government should raise. The budget resolution being drafted by the committee is for the fiscal year 1984, which starts Oct. 1. 'Our Job Is to Reduce This Deficit' With Democrats arguing that shrinking future budget deficits required tax increases, Mr. Domenici replied heatedly, ''Our job is to reduce this deficit as much as we can on the expenditure side.''