What was going on when I was born?

THE proud citizens of Nebraska had come from all over to gather at Pershing Auditorium and honor Tom Osborne and Bob Devaney, their present and past heads of state. For this occasion, much like the last 22 years of football Saturdays at Memorial Stadium during which Osborne and Devaney have directed the University of Nebraska Cornhuskers, nearly all of the citizens appeared in red. Scarlet, to be precise. They demonstrated their devotion in polyester and suede and silk. Dinner tables - row after row, the length of the arena floor - were filled with scarlet jackets, scarlet ties, scarlet sweaters, scarlet skirts and elegant scarlet dresses. There were about 3,200 admirers, including a governor, a senator, a congressman, a mayor, members of the Board of Regents, Bob Hope, the recorded, reverent voice of President Reagan, and 80 former players. ''The greatest panorama of Nebraska football lore ever assembled,'' the toastmaster told the crowd, and no one disagreed.

''In a good performance there is electricity between me and the audience,'' observes Natalia Makarova. ''I am almost like a magician,'' she says. ''I think about what I can do to thrill them. You know almost immediately if the audience is with you. All is up to you. When I feel that everyone is holding their breath waiting for me to move, I find it so inspiring. It helps my spirit. Sometimes you don't understand why that electricity isn't there. Sometimes your nerves go against you.''

Farce, it's said, is a dying form; and the reason for its disappearance from our stages is not hard to find. It cannot easily breathe in a permissive atmosphere. People don't often cram their lovers under beds or their mistresses into closets these days: they're more prone to introduce them to their spouses with a ''By the way dear, there's someone I'd like you to get to know.'' And that is bad, very bad for farce, which thrives on fear and dismay and worse. Ideally, it requires a sort of bug-eyed brinkmanship between panic and disaster.

In 1899, when the Bayard Building, the only New York City structure designed by the noted Chicago architect Louis H. Sullivan, was completed at 65 Bleecker Street between Broadway and Lafayette Street, its Greenwich Village setting was one of the city's most desirable commercial and residential areas. Regarded as a skyscraper at the time, the 13-story office building represented a contrast to other structures of its era with its open interior construction and organically ornamental cornice and facade.

WASHINGTON THE images of the past week tell the story. The battleship New Jersey firing its 16-inch guns into the Lebanese hills, the debris in the truck-bombed American compound in Kuwait, the concrete highway dividers being placed around the State Department in Washington and in front of the United States's Mission to the United Nations in New York. Violence is being answered not only with force but with anger, frustration and worry. With its massive firepower, the United States has tried to demonstrate that it cannot be run out of Lebanon. But the frantic efforts to protect Federal buildings against the possible spread of suicide bombings to this country contain another message: that the United States Government at home and its 260 missions overseas are vulnerable to terrorism.

The State Board of Regents, which last summer proposed tougher academic standards and a longer school year as part of its five-year plan to improve education in New York, will revise some of its proposals and may drop others, according to board members. They are responding, they said, to criticism from educators throughout the state who have argued that the plan, approved tentatively by the Regents in July, was too rigid and would cost too much. The state board has the authority to define academic standards, curriculum requirements and testing procedures for all public and private schools in the state, but it cannot appropriate funds. Board to Meet Next Month Among the elements of the plan most likely to be dropped or altered, board members said in interviews, are the call for an extended school year and the requirement that all high school students develop proficiency in a foreign language to win a diploma.

-taking of restaurant fare has arrived. The encouraging results will help provide the answer to the frequent request for the names of best restaurants in the area. This year was a good year for restaurantgoers. Some old favorites have grown more wonderful, and a handful of exciting new faces has added sparkle to the dinner hour. We proffer, then, more or less in order of our preference within each category, the small and plain whose serious kitchens have caught our fancy, as well as the consistent great. Unless otherwise noted, prices reflect the average cost of a three-course, a la carte and exclude wine, tax and tips. Price-fixed specials are sometimes unavailable on holidays such as Christmas and Mother's Day. Policies concerning reservations and credit cards vary widely and reservations are often necessary, so it is best to call first.

A car bomb exploded here today in a street crowded with Christmas shoppers outside Harrods, the department store, killing 5 people and wounding 91 others. There were no immediate claims of responsibility for the blast, but Scotland Yard officials said they were convinced it was the work of the Irish Republican Army. The dead lay with the wounded on the rubble-strewn street as the remnants of the explosive-laden car and others caught in the explosion burned fiercely. Wrapped Gifts Strewn About Some of the wounded, covered with blood and stunned by the explosion, sat numbly, waiting for help. Distinctive olive-and-gold Harrods shopping bags lay in the gutters, spilling brightly wrapped gifts into the street.

MAMORU Tabuchi considers it a good week if he eats dinner at home twice. Most nights, the president of Mitsui's American subsidiary is driven in a chauffeured Cadillac to the Yale Club in midtown New York to pick up his wife, Seiko, and begin an obligatory round of social engagements. They may head for a reception at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel nearby, a small dinner party for visiting Japanese colleagues at the Kitcho Restaurant blocks away, or a lecture at the Japan Society, also in midtown. The schedule is often so heavy that the Tabuchis, who live in suburban Scarsdale, rent a suite at the Yale Club so that his wife can change clothes before parties - or between them. Mr. Tabuchi heads the American operations of Mitsui & Company, a large Japanese trading conglomerate. His busy evening schedule reflects his position at the summit of Japanese businessmen in the United States. Within this self-contained world, the 59-year-old Mr. Tabuchi and a handful of other top executives have the sort of fame and influence that Lee A. Iacocca of Chrysler or Walter B. Wriston of Citicorp have among Americans.

Since Northeast Utilities hung a ''for sale'' sign on the 101-year-old lighthouse it owns in Stamford Harbor, the utility has received some 24 bids on the dilapidated 80-foot, cylindrical structure, which comes with 10 acres of submerged property.

The drama did not go out of the Rangers- Islanders confrontation until there were less than 10 minutes left in the third period. But when it left, it left in a hurry. The Islanders scored five goals in the last 9:25 tonight at the Nassau Colliseum to defeat the Rangers, 7-1. The ending left the Islanders admiring their goaltender, Billy Smith, who stopped four breakaway opportunities before the game became lopsided.

A six- month-old American-planned military and civic pilot program to bring peace to a key eastern province in El Salvador is in danger of failing, American officials said this week. The project, which United States officials said last spring was ''the make it or break it'' test for the Salvadoran military, has been damaged by a guerrilla counteroffensive and by unwillingness of the Government army to pursue insurgents who have returned to the province, San Vicente. ''The plan is at a stage where it needs reinvigoration after the guerrilla counteroffensive,'' Ambassador Thomas R. Pickering said in an interview Friday. ''The army has not shown the capacity to deal with the counteroffensive and the area of the plan. We had said that was a key test.''