What was going on when I was born?

The corporate practice of siphoning money from employee pension plans to finance acquisitions, fight takeovers, retire debt or dress up financial statements has caught the eye of Congress. Hearings open Wednesday before the House Select Committee on Aging. ''Millions of American workers are faced with a jeopardy to their financial security in old age,'' said Representative Edward R. Roybal, Democrat of California and chairman of the House panel. The Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, which sets the rules, did not envisage a situation in which cash-hungry company managers would terminate pension plans that have generated surplus funds, set up new plans with only the funds needed to cover their employees and use the excess funds for general corporate purposes. ''Even if some form of defined contribution plan replaces the terminated plan,'' Mr. Roybal said, ''it is unlikely that the worker will be able to achieve the level and security of benefits previously offered under the terminated plan.''

The seventh and decisive race in the 25th America's Cup series between Australia II, the challenger, and Liberty, the defender, was postponed today because of insufficient wind. The winds of controversy, though, blew strongly after the race was postponed. Dennis Conner, Liberty's skipper, called for a lay day, or day off, for Sunday, and the final race in this series was rescheduled for Monday. But what really stirred the Australians was the plan to have Liberty taken to Cove Haven Marina in Barrington, R.I., tonight to have its ballast readjusted again.

The lid blew off Manila last week with four consecutive days of violent street demonstrations, raising questions in Washington about whether it was a physically or politically safe place for President Reagan's scheduled visit early in November. President Ferdinand E. Marcos ordered a strict security force crackdown after 11 people were killed in anti-Government protests. By week's end, White House officials who had earlier said Mr. Reagan had no plans to cancel the Philippine portion of his Asian tour were saying it might be ''very difficult'' for him to go ahead with it. Mrs. Reagan was said to be ''very concerned'' that the President ''might be in danger,'' especially in light of unanswered questions about the bizarre assassination of the Philippine President's chief political rival, former Senator Benigno S. Aquino Jr., who was killed last month while under the Government's protection.

FOR the past eight years, State Senator Thom Serrani, a Democrat, and State Representative Christopher Shays, a Republican, have represented Stamford in the General Assembly. They worked on legislation together, commuted to the State Capitol together, socialized together and became what they each describe as ''great friends.'' Now they are running against each other in the Mayor's race in Stamford. They insist that their new status as opponents will not hurt their friendship. In fact, they are planning a joint barbecue and softball game for their campaign workers.

The ads call it ''The Best Musical Ever,'' a judgment that is at least debatable. But as of Thursday, no one can dispute that ''A Chorus Line'' is the longest-running Broadway show ever. This week, almost eight years after it opened, Michael Bennett's Broadway show about dancers auditioning for a Broadway show will celebrate its 3,389th performance in suitably grand style. The current company of ''A Chorus Line'' will be joined by not only the original company but also the national touring company, the international company, the two bus-and-truck companies, the Las Vegas company, and members of the foreign companies - each group performing a segment of the show, and all of them appearing in the finale, 350 dancers strong. The preparations have been something of a logistical nightmare, not to mention costly. ''My guess is that this event will cost over half a million dollars,'' Mr. Bennett was saying one afternoon recently in his comfortable, sunlit office on lower Broadway. ''The show only cost $256,000 to do Off Broadway, and I rehearsed for a year!'' In the spirit of the show itself, though, the record-breaking performance will pay tribute to all the dancers who have contributed to the making of ''A Chorus Line'' and, by extension, all the dancers who are the backbone of the American musical theater. The success of the show, in turn, is a tribute to the process of making theater.

The first-place Philadelphia Phillies won their ninth straight game today when they rallied for five runs in the ninth inning off Bruce Sutter and overpowered the St. Louis Cardinals, 9-6. ''It was a textbook case,'' said Mike Schmidt, who hit a home run during the rally. ''Everything that baseball calls for under pressure was done: two pinch-hits, a squeeze bunt, the long ball. If you were playing a baseball game with a computer, you couldn't punch it in any better.''

Lebanon's civil war widened dangerously last week, drawing the international peacekeepers even closer to the conflagration. Striving to put out the Middle East's latest three-alarmer, Saudi Arabian, Lebanese and American mediators shuttled between Beirut and Damascus trying for a cease-fire. Syria and its allies in Lebanon raised objections - pushing to undermine President Amin Gemayel's Government by excluding Government leaders from national conciliation talks and by insisting the concilators' eventual decisions be binding on the Government. In Damascus, Walid Jumblat, the Druse leader, called for withdrawal of the 5,500-man multinational force, the shaky Government's main prop against collapse.

An Opinion article about the D.R.G. system is on page 30. HAVING adopted an approach much like New Jersey's three-year-old system for controlling hospital costs, the Federal Government will begin Saturday to limit hospital reimbursements under Medicare, the federally subsidized medical insurance plan for the elderly and disabled. Both the state and national plans use fixed payments based on a patient's diagnosis rather than the length of the hospital stay. (Because New Jersey's system includes the state's Medicare patients, it is exempt from the new Federal regulations).

AIDED by a $45,000 Federal grant, the county's first shelter for runaway and homeless youths will open its doors this fall in White Plains. The shelter, in a Longview Avenue house that had been used as a residence for mentally retarded adults, will have room for seven people and it is expected that 400 youths will use it in its first year of operation. ''It's a bit of a cliche but we're very pleased,'' said Donald F. Cantrell, executive director of the Westchester Childrens Association, which received the grant from the Office of Human Services. ''We feel it will serve a very real need in the county.'' The association will be legally responsible for maintaining the shelter. Programming and counseling - ''the most-important components,'' Mr. Cantrell said - will be provided by the three-year-old Runaway and Homeless Youth Network of Westchester.

LAST Monday, President Reagan announced the formation of a Justice Department task force to study the ''darker side to family life in America - the problem of family violence.'' Hearings are to be held in the next six months. Over the last decade, as states took cognizance of the problem, many of them passed laws to deal with it. By 1981, 38 states had such laws. New Jersey's Domestic Violence Prevention Law took effect on April 9, 1982. Last week, as National Domestic Violence Awareness Week was about to begin, some of those who work with the law in New Jersey praised it, others called it confusing and still others deemed it useless.

Ten years ago, in the early hours of Oct. 17, 1973, six Arab and non-Arab members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, meeting in Kuwait, decided to raise the price of their oil by 70 percent. In the evening of the same day, in the same hotel conference room, nine Arab oil producers responded to the outbreak of war in the Middle East by imposing an embargo on oil supplies to the United States and the Netherlands, Israel's strongest allies, and by cutting overall production levels. These two actions touched off an energy upheaval that has reshaped everyday life around the world and has forced a major shift in economic and political equations that is still not complete, nor even well understood. A Spreading Complacency Today, as the 10th anniversary of the Kuwait meetings approaches, energy has receded from the day-to-day consciousness of most Americans. The memory of predawn gasoline lines has faded.

Passions aroused by the shooting down of Korean Air Lines Flight 7 took on a life of their own last week. Reagan Administration officials said the partial freeze in Soviet-American relations could last until after next year's Presidential election. Possibly dismayed at that prospect and by international reaction, the Russians began dropping hints of regret and admissions of error.