What was going on when I was born?

Judy L. Chesser, the New York City lobbyist here, met with the staff of Senator Alfonse M. D'Amato recently to describe the bounty that would flow to the city if the New York Republican voted in favor of a $26 million amendment. At the same time that Senator D'Amato was being courted by the city, he was being courted by Brad C. Johnson, the New York State lobbyist, who Mr. D'Amato understood to say that the $26 million the city wanted for itself should be spread around the state. New York City and New York State have substantial lobbying offices in the capital, and sometimes their interests clash. Sometimes, their interests coincide, but in other cases they appear to go their separate ways with little coordination. Dwindling Federal Appropriations The chief chore for Mr. Johnson and Miss Chesser is to insure that in an era of dwindling Federal appropriations to state and local governments, the actions of the Congressional and executive branches help their clients as much as possible.

A suicide terrorist driving a truck loaded with TNT blew up an American Marine headquarters at the Beirut airport today, killing at least 161 marines and sailors and wounding 75. In an almost simultaneous attack, another bomb- laden truck slammed into a French paratroop barracks two miles away. According to Lebanese Civil Defense authorities, at least 27 French paratroopers were killed, 12 were wounded and 53 were reported missing and believed buried in rubble. Official Defense Ministry figures issued in Paris listed 12 French soldiers dead, 13 wounded and 48 missing. It was the highest number of American military personnel killed in a single attack since the Vietnam War. The identity of the attackers still had not been determined tonight.

President Reagan will try this week to break the logjam over the bill authorizing an increase in the American contribution to the International Monetary Fund, Administration officials reported over the weekend. The long-awaited move still has to be cleared by top Presidential advisers, but according to some officials, it will be in the form of a letter thanking 20 House Democrats who supported the President when the I.M.,F. bill was on the floor last August. Another official, when asked whether the letter would take the form of a ''thank you'' or an ''apology'' to the 20 Democrats for an attack on them by the House Republican Campaign Committee, described it as an ''explanation.'' He said it had almost been cleared Friday, and other officials said today that the timetable for the signing of the letter would be kept despite the Administration's concern over the bombing of the Marine quarters in Beirut. The letter, which has been through many drafts, represents a new effort by the White House to get the legislation moving again. The bill has been caught in political crossfire, disputes over what the United States should or should not be doing to help the rest of the world and a bitter conflict over legislation that the Administration has opposed for subsidized housing for the American poor.

Gunnery Sgt. Herman Lange was one of the first marines to get down to the bombed Marine headquarters from a nearby barracks. ''Bodies were lying around all over,'' he said. ''Other people were trapped under the concrete. I could hear them screaming: 'Get us out. Don't leave us.' I just started digging, picking men out and taking them away on a jeep. It was total devastation.''

Robert M. Gerrity, president of Ford Brazil, was hurrying through a day of meetings in the showroom of his newly renovated plant here, amid new Ford Escorts that the plant began making last summer for the Latin American market and Europe. He had been summoned back to Detroit to try to explain, once again, the condition of the Brazilian economy. ''It is $4 an hour here,'' Mr. Gerrity said of the wages paid the 12,000 Ford production workers in the factories of the Ford complex here, nearly all in royal blue coveralls. ''It's $12 in Japan, $18 in Europe and $24 in the United States. The plant you're looking at right there will beat the cost of running any plant anywhere in the world.''

New Yorkers braved a steady rain to cheer 15,193 runners in the 14th New York City Marathon yesterday, and Rod Dixon of New Zealand returned the enthusiasm with a courageous victory, the first by a foreign man in this 26-mile-385-yard race. Grete Waitz of Norway, comfortable and unchallenged after seven miles, reaffirmed her place as queen of the roads and won her fifth women's title in a time of 2 hours 27 minutes - 14 seconds faster than last year's victory. Mrs. Waitz finished 141st over all. The 33-year-old Dixon, who won a bronze medal in the 1,500-meter run at the 1972 Munich Olympics, did not take the lead from Geoff Smith of England until the final mile, and reached the finish line in Central Park only nine seconds ahead, in 2 hours 8 minutes 59 seconds. Smith, 29, was second with the fastest first marathon ever, 2:09:08. In an ebullient display of emotion after surging across the line, the lanky, mustachioed Dixon dropped to his knees, lifted his arms, kissed the wet pavement, again raised his arms and put his hands to his head. ''I did want it very much,'' he said after extending his string of road-racing victories to 20 over the last 14 months. ''And somehow you just express how you feel. I had tears.''

At least 161 American marines and sailors were killed and 75 were injured when suicide terrorists driving a truck loaded with TNT blew up a Marine headquarters at Beirut International Airport. A Pentagon spokesman said the truck broke through a series of steel fences and sandbag barricades and exploded in the heart of the headquarters shortly before dawn. Two miles away, another bomb-laden truck crashed into a French barracks, killing at least 12 French paratroopers and wounding 13. Fifty-three paratroopers were missing and believed buried in the rubble. (Page A1, Column 6.) The explosion at the Marines' headquarters building was so massive it dug a crater in the heart of the structure 30 feet deep and 40 feet wide. ''Bodies were lying around all over,'' said a rescuer. ''Other people were trapped under the concrete. I could hear them screaming: 'Get us out. Don't leave us.' I just started digging, picking men out.'' (A1:5.)

After a car bomb blew up the United States Embassy in Beirut on April 18, killing 63 people, the Marine force at the Beirut airport took steps to strengthen security measures against a similar incident, Marine Corps officers said today. The embassy bombing, and at least seven other serious car bombings this year in Beirut, gave warning of a common tactic. But a determined terrorist overwhelmed the new airport defenses, raising questions about why the security measures were inadequate. Larry Speakes, the chief White House spokesman, said tonight that President Reagan had ordered the Marine Commandant, Gen. P. X. Kelly, to go to Beirut to determine what security measures could be taken to improve protection for the marines in Lebanon. 'Unbelievable,' Kennedy Says Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, a member of the Armed Services Commitee, asked for an investitation by the committee into what he called the ''unbelievable breakdown in security that allowed it to happen.''

They came, a thousand thespians, to learn to speak Shakespeare trippingly on the tongue. And when they stumbled - sawed the air too much, tore a passion to tatters and, all in all, out- Heroded Herod - some of the finer English classical actors tried to help. ''Do that speech while running around the room,'' Christopher Ravenscroft commanded a young actress, Chris Vecchione. ''Aye,'' she cried, beginning both a speech by Viola from ''Twelfth Night'' and three laps around a church basement on West 66th Street. When she puffed to a close in her soliloquy, Mr. Ravenscroft pronounced himself pleased. Hamlet never asked his players to jog, but that was one of dozens of ploys that five members of the Royal Shakespeare Company used in New York last week in five days of workshops and performances with American actors.

Quotation of the Day ''There is no clear way out. We cannot retreat under fire and if we were to declare war we wouldn't know who to declare war against.''

Lederle Laboratories has them pushing vaccinations. Texas Instruments is using them for talking books. Hallmark is trying them on cards and puzzles. Coleco is weaving them into video games. Mattel is making stuffed copies of them. Which is not to forget the embroidery kits, scribble pads and socks. Look out Strawberry Shortcake and Smurfs. The Berenstain Bears have arrived. Not only are the bumptious bears the most ubiquitous characters in children's books this year, but also they are the latest major challengers in the multibillion-dollar world of character licensing.

NewsAnalysis WASHINGTON, Oct. 23 - The devastating attack on the American marines in Lebanon today stunned the Reagan Administration and put it under new pressure to come up with a clearer explanation of why the marines are there. Tonight the White House, seeking to justify the presence of the marines in Lebanon, said they had to remain there and not yield to ''international terrorism.'' If they were withdrawn now, the White House said, ''the civilized world'' would suffer. In the 13 months since the marines were sent to the Beirut area, the reasons for their presence there have shifted with the situation. At first they were dispatched to bolster the morale of the Lebanese people and Government and to be ready to help police areas that the United States had expected would be evacuated by the Israeli, Syrian and Palestinian forces. But more recently, as the hopes for an early withdrawal of these forces faded, the marines, augmented by United States Navy ships, have become in effect a protector of the Lebanese Army, fighting off efforts by Syrian- backed Druse and Shiite factions to undermine the Lebanese Government. But even this role was ambiguous because the Administration would not sanction an all-out military role for the marines for fear of alienating Congress and friendly Arab nations.