What was going on when I was born?

An article in Business Day Wednesday incorrectly characterized the debt position of Southwestern Bell. It will have the second-heaviest debt burden of the seven Bell operating companies, after the Pacific Telesis Group.

The Buffalo Bills played so foolishly yesterday that their coach apologized for his poor performance. And still, like most teams this season, they found a way to beat the Jets. The score was 24-17, and the winning play came with only 22 seconds remaining when Joe Cribbs caught a 33-yard pass from Joe Ferguson. But the Bills committed 15 penalties, more than any Jet opponent ever. The Bills used all their second-half timeouts before the end of the third quarter. And their coach, Kay Stephenson, said of the winning touchdown: ''I went against the percentages.''

Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau said today that Western European leaders had expressed broad support for his proposals to end the impasse between Moscow and Washington over arms control. ''I am encouraged by this momentum and heartened by the response,'' Mr. Trudeau told 4,000 guests at a Liberal Party fund-raising gathering in Montreal. Mr. Trudeau is urging that talks on nuclear arms limitation be expanded to all five countries possessing nuclear weapons, that safeguards be made more stringent and that tighter controls be imposed on the development of nuclear weapons. Mr. Trudeau returned to Ottawa on Friday from a five-day European trip during which he visited the leaders of France, the Netherlands, Italy, West Germany, Belgium and Britain, as well as the Pope.

''It wasn't Camelot, but we shared our questions and our struggles.'' - Suzanne Elsesser on meeting between Roman Catholic women and bishops. (B7:4.)

President Reagan, ending a two- day visit to this country, pledged ''steadfast support'' today for South Korea and said he would strengthen the United States forces stationed here. Mr. Reagan, in a joint statement with President Chun Doo Hwan, called Northeast Asia a ''region of critical strategic significance'' and said the United States would meet its ''responsibilities as a Pacific power.'' The statement was issued this morning shortly before Mr. Reagan took off for Washington after a seven-day trip to Japan and South Korea. Speaking with reporters Sunday night, Secretary of State George P. Shultz said there were no plans to add to the 40,000 American soldiers based in South Korea.

Catholic women's representatives and bishops met to discuss women's role in the church. Page B7. ROME, Nov. 13 - The Roman Catholic Church, once a symbol of dogmatic opposition to modern science, is moving into its closest collaboration with scientists in at least a century. On issues ranging from nuclear war to test-tube babies to the evolution of human life, the Vatican is soliciting technical advice from hundreds of the world's leading scientists, including Nobel Prize winners, experts in esoteric fields and technical leaders from developing nations. Most of these experts are not Catholics, and many do not even believe in God or in organized religion.

A recent court filing in the Manville Corporation's bankruptcy proceeding charges that the company has tried for years to avoid its liability for the asbestos injuries that its workers developed. In the process, the filing says, Manville used tactics of questionable legality and morality. According to the papers filed by George Rosenberg, a Los Angeles lawyer who represents asbestos victims, Manville's efforts to limit its liability have included everything from shopping for a favorable accounting opinion to lying that its former general counsel was dead when in fact he was alive. Manville officials deny any wrongdoing. ''This is a pack of scurrilous lies,'' said G. Earl Parker, the vice president-counsel of Manville.

President Reagan's national security adviser, Robert C. McFarlane, warned today that neither Syria nor any other nation could attack United States forces with impunity. Interviewed in Seoul, South Korea, on a television news program, Mr. McFarlane was asked how the United States would respond to recent incidents in which Syrian antiaircraft fire was directed at United States jets over Lebanon. Mr. McFarlane responded that whether in Syria or elsewhere ''it cannot become a precedent that American citizens or American forces can be attacked with impunity.'' Refers to Grenada Invasion He went on to refer to the invasion of Grenada, saying that the United States ''has made clear recently in another context - in the Caribbean - that we take very seriously threats to American lives.''

Because of a production error, the stock prices listed yesterday for the New York Stock Exchange in Section 3, Business, reflected daily trading activity Friday rather than figures for the full week. The correct figures appear today beginning on pages D4 and D13.

Sgt. Tom Wilburn was hanging in his parachute, 400 feet above the island of Grenada, when he concluded that the United States invasion of that small, lush dot in the Caribbean was not going to be the pushover that he had expected. ''When I went out the door,'' the 23- year-old Ranger later recalled, ''I could see the tracers coming up at me in a great long curve, getting bigger and bigger, until they looked like oranges. Then - blit! - they'd be past.'' Sergeant Wilburn landed safely. But once on the ground, he recalled, there was more fire to contend with, steady and well-aimed, from positions that were cleverly placed in the surrounding hills. Whoever was up there, Grenadian or Cuban or both, knew how to fight, the sergeant recalled thinking.

In the nearly three weeks since the invasion of this Caribbean island, American troops have detained more than 1,100 Grenadians and Cubans for interrogation. The prisoners were held in a camp equipped with wooden interview booths and boxlike isolation chambers with small holes for ventilation. American military officials said that 74 prisoners were released from the camp today, leaving only 100 of the total still in custody there. Thirty-one others, said by officials to include a number of high-ranking officials of the former Government of Prime Minister Maurice Bishop, were transferred to the island's Richmond Hill prison. The officials said the prisoners included members of the People's Revolutionary Army, Grenadian militiamen and civilians.

Because of an editing error, the meaning of a sentence in Ira Berkow's Sports of The Times column in yesterday's sports section was changed. The sentence, referring to Larry O'Brien, should have read ''And he said then that, well, he wasn't denigrating the job of commissioner of basketball, which is challenging, but he'll be honest - it's not politics.''