What was going on when I was born?

More than a year ago, a blue-ribbon mayoral panel recommended sweeping changes in the New York City taxi industry. Six months later, Mayor Koch endorsed several of the recommendations, saying that as a result ''there will be positive and visible improvements in taxi service.'' But little has changed. Several of the proposals have been stalled by administrative and legislative inaction or by opposition from taxi drivers. And amid the delay, all 11,787 medallion taxicabs are driving with permits that expired seven weeks ago.

The Navy and the Grumman Corporation have agreed that the aircraft maker, once threatened with interrupted production, would continue building F-14 fighters and A-6 bombers into the 1990's, according to Congressional, Navy and industry officials. The F-14 Tomcat is the Navy's premier fighter, and the A-6 Intruder is its mainstay bomber. Together, the two were the source of more than half of last year's $2.1 billion in revenue for the Bethpage, L.I., aircraft maker. Officials said that the agreement between Grumman and Secretary of the Navy John F. Lehman Jr. was scheduled to be presented to the Defense Resources Board for approval next Tuesday. The board, the Pentagon's executive committee, is headed by Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger.

Although plastic was brought into industrial use in 1909 by L.H. Baekeland of Yonkers, it was not until after World War II that the modern miracle substance was used in a wide variety of consumer goods, among them speedboats, dentures and flamingos. Previously flamingos were made of cement. Before that they were made by God. WHEN the flamingos return to K mart, summer is nigh in suburbia. For years they have flocked by the hundreds to discount stores and garden centers. By the time of the summer solstice, when the ceremonial Lighting of the Grills was past and the drone of the power mower was upon the land, one could observe flamingos posed on lawns and grazing in shrubbery in all their shocking - especially to the neighbors- pinkness. Shirley Bernell stopped at the display of pink plastic flamingos in a Fairfield, N.J., garden center the other day and asked her husband: ''Dick, do you think we should get some of these?'' He looked at her, speechless, as if all their years together had meant nothing, then walked slowly to the checkout counter with a can of mosquito repellent, shaking his head.

The Reagan Administration won a narrow but crucial victory tonight on the MX missile system. By a vote of 220 to 207, the House decided to authorize $2.6 billion in the coming fiscal year to produce the first 27 of the intercontinental nuclear weapons, which are to be deployed in underground silos in 1986. The vote was on an amendment to delete the MX funds from a bill authorizing $188 billion in military spending for the next fiscal year. More Votes Are Ahead Proponents of the missile argued that it was needed to modernize the aging United States missile arsenal and to force the Soviet Union to take disarmament talks more seriously. Opponents contended that there was no ''missile gap'' as the Administration contended and that to deploy the MX would heighten military tension because the weapon would be viewed by the Russians as an offensive missile for a first strike rather than as a deterrent weapon.

Paul A. Volcker, chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, said today that the board had raised the limit on the growth of the money supply for the rest of the year. Some analysts said the decision could ease upward pressure on interest rates. In making his announcement, during Congressional testimony, Mr. Volcker indicated that the Federal Reserve would no longer try to offset the 14 percent growth in the basic money supply - the money that is readily available for spending - that has taken place since December. That growth was twice as fast as the Federal reserve had wanted. But he insisted that from July onward, the Federal Reserve, which is the nation's central bank, would not permit a continuation of such rapid growth. The growth rate is to be held in a range of 5 percent to 9 percent for the rest of the year, he said. That range represents an easing from the 4 percent to 8 percent that had been planned last January for all of 1983.

For the Quaker Oats Company, the challenge of day-to-day operations can be summarized in a single question: How does one manage a $2.7 billion food empire when one's mainstay customer, the United States breakfast eater, is not eating any more breakfasts? For more than a decade, Quaker has been seeking an answer to this question. In search of new growth opportunities, the company has acquired businesses as diverse as crepe restaurants and video game cartridge companies, only to have to dispose of some of them as they failed. The results of this string of bad decisions were reflected in Quaker's latest reporting period, ended March 31, when the company announced its first quarterly loss in recent years - $31.6 million.

Congressional conferees broke an impasse tonight and approved a compromise that would repeal withholding of taxes on dividends and interest but still recoup additional revenue through new measures to increase tax compliance. The resolution of the differences between bills passed by the House of Representatives and the Senate was a major step in the months-long effort to repeal a provision of the 1982 tax act that would have required banks and financial institutions to withhold 10 percent of their customers' interest and dividends. The major compliance provision accepted by the conferees was a proposal to seek additional funds to hire more Internal Revenue Service clerical personnel to check taxpayers' returns for complete disclosure of dividend and interest income. The conferees dropped a proposal to require taxpayers to attach to their tax returns their copies of reports -Form 1099 - of dividends and interest paid to them.

AS early as 6:30 A.M. each weekday morning Kathy Cannell has already bundled up her 6-month-old daughter, Aileen, and 3-year-old toddler, LaNelle, and is ready to leave home in Hamden, Conn. The baby is dropped off at her parents' house on the other side of town. LaNelle is left at the Stamford Day Care Program, near Mrs. Cannell's office. Like many other day care centers in the region it is now in such demand that it has a 200-name waiting list. Mrs. Cannell had to wait a year for a place. Mrs. Cannell Second of two articles on private day care for children of working parents. then drives on to her job as a secretary at the Condec Corporation. ''From friends to sitters we have tried everything,'' she said. ''It's been a constant struggle.''

The streetwise dialogue of the young men socializing on a corner in Harlem, in one of summer's rituals, turned to talk of the police. ''Those cops over there don't care,'' said one particularly animated man, who identified himself only as ''Squeak'' and gestured toward the 28th Precinct station house down Frederick Douglass Boulevard, at 123d Street. ''They'll beat you if you look at them the wrong way, so who needs them?'' An opposing opinion was offered by Fana Claiborne, as she made her way through the percolating street life of 125th Street. ''The police really try to help around here,'' she said, tugging at her straw hat. ''Good people want them to do even more, but I know a lot of people feel that they're black people's enemies and not our friends.''

The House of Representatives today formally censured Representatives Daniel B. Crane, Republican of Illinois, and Gerry E. Studds, Democrat of Massachusetts, after voting overwhelmingly to strengthen the penalities recommended by its ethics committee. Mr. Crane was censured for having sexual relations with a 17-yearold female House page in 1980 and Mr. Studds for having sexual relations with a 17-year-old male page in 1973. Both men have acknowledged the conduct. After a yearlong investigation into charges of sexual misconduct in the House, the ethics committee last week recommended that the two men be reprimanded, the mildest form of punishment available. But the House voted today to revise the penalties to censure, which called for the two Congressmen to stand in the well of the House and hear the judgment of their peers read.

An item in the Briefing column of the Washington Talk page on May 16 incorrectly identified and quoted a professor who commented on a suggestion that Stanford University's relationship with the Hoover Institution would have been challenged irrespective of the institution's political leanings. The professor, Alphonse Juilland of Stanford, said, ''Whoever believes that belongs in Disneyland.''

''Resolved, one, that Representative Daniel B. Crane be censured; two, that Representative Daniel B. Crane present himself in the well of the House for the pronouncement of censure; and three, that Representative Daniel B. Crane be censured with the public reading of this resolution by the Speaker.'' - Speaker Thomas P. O'Neill Jr., who later read an identical resolution citing Representative Gerry E. Studds. (A1:4.)