What was going on when I was born?

From their offices on the 68th floor of the World Trade Center, the people who run the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey can look out over the harbor toward the old Brooklyn Navy Yard, where the battleship Iowa was built and from which she steamed away in 1943. Now, more than a decade since the Navy pulled out of the ports of Boston, Newport, R.I., and New York, the return of the Iowa and a battle group of supporting ships stands like a golden question mark just offshore. As part of the Reagan Administration's plan to expand and disperse the Navy, the Iowa is being refitted for modern war. When assigned a new home port as the centerpiece of what the Navy calls a Surface Action Group, she will bring with her a fortune in Navy paychecks and civilian jobs -and the sobering complement of almost 100 Tomahawk cruise missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads.

Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger yesterday warned the Soviet Union and ''any proxies they may have in Syria'' that any aggression by them in the region would be met by ''a retaliatory force.'' He added that Moscow was ''making a profound and dangerous mistake'' if it thought it could force the United States to abandon its commitment to Israel's security. Mr. Weinberger, speaking at a meeting of the American Jewish Committee in New York, predicted that the withdrawal of Syrian, Israeli and Palestine Liberation Organization forces from Lebanon was ''reasonably close.'' Shultz Offer to Syria In Washington, Secretary of State George P. Shultz offered to renew contacts and improve relations with Syria as part of the American effort to bring about such a withdrawal by the three forces. Mr. Shultz avoided any criticism of Syria in his remarks.

Once upon a time, it was decreed throughout the land that when the traffic light turned yellow, the car should slow down. This was many years ago, when young people said ''sir'' and ''ma'am,'' when subway cars rarely smelled of marijuana, when there was no need to take out a loan to rent an apartment. In fact, there are apparently still areas in which this is true today, but they are not in New York City. In New York City, the yellow light has lost all meaning, or else it means, as one cabdriver said yesterday, that you should run like hell to beat the red.

Salvadoran political leaders say they are disturbed and bewildered by the discussions in Washington over how much aid their country should receive and what their Government must do to receive any aid at all. The Salvadoran leaders, who represent a broad political spectrum, said in interviews over the last two days that they felt the entire Congressional debate in Washington had progressed under a false assumption that one country could decide the future of another. Foreign Minister Fidel Chavez Mena said that ''it's not very pleasant'' to hear your country's future debated more than 2,000 miles away. 'The Determining Factor' ''For us,'' he said, ''the United States is the determining factor in helping us to consolidate the democratic political process, but the relationship must be based on mutual respect.''

Four men were convicted here yesterday of plotting to smuggle guns, explosives and surface-to-air missiles to the Provisional Irish Republican Army, the outlawed group battling British rule in Northern Ireland. A spokesman for the Federal Bureau of Investigation said the convictions were the first in cases in which F.B.I. investigations had led to indictments in the last decade of 18 I.R.A. sympathizers on weapons or other charges in the United States. The spokesman, Lane Bonner, said nine people were awaiting trial or were fugitives. Other I.R.A.-related prosecutions, he said, might have resulted from investigations by other agencies, but he did not know their results.

Industrial production jumped 2.1 percent in April, the largest increase in almost eight years, the Federal Reserve reported today. Economists and Administration officials said the economy should now be stronger this spring than had been expected. The rise in industrial production, which measures the output of the nation's factories, mines and utilities, was widespread, showing that the recovery was beginning to reach more sectors of the economy. The percent increase was the fifth in a row, following a 1.2 percent rise in March.

Tariq Aziz, Iraq's Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, was quoted here today as having said he thought the United States would soon move in the United Nations Security Council to seek an end to the Iraqi-Iranian war. Mr. Aziz, who met here with Secretary of State George P. Shultz on Tuesday, reported on the conversation today in an interview with Le Monde. He said the war was the main topic.

In the small Amazon River town of Parintins, you can exchange goods at the wharf with the traditional itinerant river hucksters known as ''regatoes'' who offer guitars and funeral wreaths and nails and health powders made from the leaves of a local plant. You can also dial New York directly. A trestlework tower and skyward-directed communications dishes link the remote community with the rest of the world, but the equipment had to be taken to Parintins by boat because there is still no road to the town. The 4,000-mile-long river harbors a motley collection of locally familiar watercraft, such as slat-sided passenger ships called ''bird cages,'' fishing dugouts, barges, tugboats and homemade floating cattle pens. In their midst there are oil tankers and other oceangoing ships, their holds full of cellulose or bauxite or iron ore from the extensive development projects being set up in the area.

Sergei Batrovin, a founder of an independent antinuclear group that the authorities have tried to crush, received an exit visa today and plans to leave the Soviet Union with his wife and baby, his friends reported. The 26-year-old Mr. Batrovin, his 25-year-old wife, Natasha, and their 13-month-old daughter will go to Vienna on May 20, the friends said.

The sporadic street skirmishes over the last three weeks that have resulted in dozens of injuries and hundreds of arrests in Paris are increasingly taking on the appearance of clashes between the police and young brawlers known to students here as ''the uncontrollables.'' A pattern has developed in which youths - some from extremist groups of the right and the left, some on an apolitical hunt for the sirens and anarchy of street fighting - attach themselves to student demonstrations, then use them as cover and as a starting point for vandalism and jousts with authority. The situation has made it extremely difficult to assess the real strength and direction of the student protests that continue throughout France against the Socialist Government's university revision bill. Some students have battled with the police and seem ready to continue. But the presence of ''the uncontrollables,'' rejected by the main student groups, has brought a degree of violence to the demonstrations that strengthens the Government's contention it is dealing more with right-wing extremists than average students.

The United States Air Force said today that it had begun airlifting equipment to England for its cruise missile base at Greenham Common. The Greenham Common base has been the target of antinuclear protests for 20 months, and a group of protesters opposed to the deployment of United States missiles is camped outside the gates of the base. A C-5 Galaxy aircraft landed May 3 at Greenham Common near Newbury, about 50 miles west of London, said an Air Force spokesman, Capt. Steve Manning.

President Reagan has moved toward modifying his strategic arms proposal by subscribing to a principle that requires an immediate start on nuclear force reductions as new weapons are introduced, even before a final agreement on a new strategic arms treaty, Administration officials said today. The officials said that once the new concept was put before Soviet negotiators it could be applied without waiting for final agreement on a new strategic arms treaty. They said this new approach, marking a change in the President's position under pressure from Congress, was one major implication of his letter Thursday to three Senators, seeking their support for the MX missile in Congress. The officials said it was doubtful whether the formulation of the new American position would be completed before the strategic arms talks resumed on June 8, but they predicted that some changes would be approved by then, moving the American position closer to the proposal made by the Soviet Union.