What was going on when I was born?

As most of midtown Manhattan's garment district remained blacked out for a third day yesterday, the Consolidated Edison Company held out the hope that full power might be restored as early as this morning. A Con Edison spokesman, Herbert Hadad, reported last night that by 7:30 P.M. about 60 percent of the necessary cable splicing had been done. ''The work has progressed well, better than anticipated,'' he said. Con Edison had earlier said that service might not be restored until Monday.

Libyan planes were reported today to have attacked the remote outpost of Oum Chalouba in what seemed to be a prelude to further advances into Chad. According to reports from Western and Chadian sources, the Libyan planes, which played a major role in the assault on Wednesday against the northern oasis of Faya-Largeau, were in action Thursday and today. A Government force of 1,000 soldiers captured Oum Chalouba from the rebels just two days ago. Oum Chalouba is about 180 miles southeast of Faya-Largeau on the road to Abeche, the most important town in eastern Chad.

Agriculture Secretary John R. Block and Labor Secretary Raymond J. Donovan are in sharp disagreement over the wage rates to be paid to aliens who come legally to this country to harvest fruit, vegetables and other crops. Mr. Block complained, in a letter to Mr. Donovan, that new wage rates set by the Labor Department were too high. The proposed increase, over 30 percent in some states, is ''inflationary and unreasonable,'' Mr. Block said. Labor Department officials, defending the new wage rates, said lower rates would adversely affect American workers by depressing their wages.

At precisely 9:45 A.M., LeDeane Tummings turned on the public-address system in Gimbels. ''Base to all employees,'' he said. ''Miracle on 32d Street. The store is open for business. Have a nice day.'' When the announcement was made, Teddy Zambounis, Gimbels's chief electrician, was sitting at the counter of the store's slightly stale- smelling restaurant eating fried eggs and bacon.

Government officials, reacting to the apparent desire of the 16-year-old son of a Soviet diplomat to stay in the United States, tightened security at points of exit today and said they would insist on interviewing the youth before he is returned to the Soviet Union. ''We are not going to let him out without interviewing him,'' a State Department official said. The affair, first viewed as a missing- persons case and then transformed into an incident with international implications, set in motion an exchange of diplomatic notes and prompted a series of alerts to Immigration and Naturalization Service officers at border stations and points of exit around the nation. ''Things are buttoned up,'' said a State Department official, describing that action. Officials would not give further details on the tightened security measures.

Subway tracks have deteriorated so badly in New York that sections of the 79-year-old system are being closed at night and on weekends for emergency repairs. The first weekend closing began last night on the IRT No. 2 line between Franklin and Flatbush Avenues in Brooklyn. The seven stations will reopen Monday at 5 A.M. John D. Simpson, president of the Transit Authority, said other temporary closings would be ordered in the coming weeks to repair nearly 400 trouble spots. He did not specify which lines would be affected.

The Government said today that 17 civilians, including 3 children, were killed Thursday night in anti-Government protests. Constant small-weapons fire rattled throughout the capital in the night. The Government blamed leftist extremists, and the opposition said the presence of troops in the streets was responsible for the violence, the worst in the 10 years of Gen. Augusto Pinochet's rule. The Government said 62 people were wounded, including 13 policemen and soldiers.

One look at this border crossing between Israel and Lebanon reveals the ways that Israel is trying to create a normal relationship with Lebanon in the aftermath of the June 1982 invasion. Here on a promontory over the Mediterranean, where before 1948 the coastal trains rumbled past between Istanbul and Cairo, the Israelis have built what one official called ''a normal frontier station.'' ''We have a bank, customs, immigration and a tourist information office,'' he said. Nearby, 20 Lebanese Maronite nuns, on their way to a monthlong retreat in Israel, were lined up with suitcases and documents to complete entry formalities.

The Mexican Government has told Nicaragua that its oil supplies will be contingent upon Managua's commitment to pay, according to American diplomats and Mexican officials. To underline its decision, Mexico held up oil shipments for June and July and released them only after high-level delegations arrived from Nicaragua for urgent talks, the diplomats and officials said. The decision reportedly came after serious debate. Although Mexican officials denied they were acting at the behest of the United States, their move against Nicaragua is something American diplomats in this region have been urging for some time.

In the final week of campaigning for Nigeria's presidential election, President Shehu Shagari made a stop in the northern city of Kano, where he was scheduled to rename an airport in honor of a political leader who died suddenly a few months ago. It so happened that the President's key rival, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, was also in Kano, awaiting repairs on his helicopter before returning to Lagos. The two longtime adversaries had exchanged harsh words in the campaign, with Chief Awolowo charging that a vote for Mr. Shagari was tantamount to a vote for inefficiency, poverty and corruption. Nevertheless, upon hearing that the chief was in town, the President invited him to the ceremony, embraced him in public view, then offered him a ride back to Lagos so he would not have to wait for his broken helicopter. Chief Awolowo accepted.

The South Korean Navy sank what it described as an armed North Korean spy boat off the country's eastern island of Ullung-Do Friday, killing at least three North Korean agents, the Defense Ministry announced today. The incident occurred just eight days after the south said its forces sank another North Korean spy boat, killing five North Korean commandos, in the sea off the southeastern town of Wolsong, where a nuclear power plant is now operating.

In only five days in office, Guatemala's new chief of state, Brig. Gen. Oscar Mejia Victores, has moved the country's foreign policy decidedly closer to Washington's view of the causes and cures of the region's problems. General Mejia Victores, who took power in a coup on Monday, has abandoned the inward-looking and relatively neutral stance of his predecessor, Brig. Gen. Efrain Rios Montt. He has replaced it with a vocal hard line against the left in the region and attitudes that are certain to change substantially the dynamics of regional peace efforts. General Mejia Victores's first Cabinet change was to dismiss Foreign Minister Eduardo Castillo Arriola. The General has already taken public aim at Nicaragua's Sandinista Government, calling it ''not only a threat to Guatemala but to the whole continent.''