What was going on when I was born?

Despite a huge increase in the military category, factory orders for durable goods rose only eight-tenths of 1 percent in March, the smallest increase in three months, the Commerce Department said today. Without a 40.2 percent surge in the volatile sector of military orders, total manufacturing orders would have dropped 2.3 percent. Durable goods are products expected to last three or more years.

FIVE years ago the Greater New York Councils of the Boy Scouts of America began an experiment with 2,000 handicapped children to see if they could become scouts. The answer today is a resounding yes. More than 21,000 of the 75,000 scouts in New York City have some disability. Some are blind, some cannot hear, some are autistic; others are mentally retarded or physically handicapped, and some are both. Scouting officials also include in the program youngsters with learning disabilities, the neurologically impaired and those who are hyperactive or emotionally disturbed. But all are Boy Scouts, participants in the councils' Scouting for the Handicapped program, the largest of its kind in the country and one of the fastest-growing segments of scouting in the city.

Walter F. Mondale, saying ''the clock is ticking'' in the nuclear arms race, today proposed a freeze on military uses of space. In a speech laced with criticism of President Reagan, Mr. Mondale said the Administration's proposals to develop lasers and other weapons in space would ''dangerously destabilize'' relations between the United States and the Soviet Union. ''In this 1984 election you can determine what the year 2000 will be like,'' Mr. Mondale told students and teachers who filled an auditorium at Case Western Reserve University. Mr. Mondale's principal rival for the Democratic Presidential nomination, Senator Gary Hart of Colorado, also spoke in Cleveland today. He continued his attack on both Mr. Mondale and Mr. Reagan, outlining his ideas for an economic policy. (Page A18.)

The Scouting column in Sports Pages on Friday gave an incorrect title for Reggie Jackson's new book, published by Villard. It is called ''Reggie.''

At the moment, the city's exposition and convention center has a fairly straightforward name: the New York Exposition and Convention Center. In a telephone interview yesterday, Governor Cuomo suggested that by the time of its expected opening, two years behind schedule in mid-1986, the center have a different name, although he is not quite sure what it should be. ''It's not going to be the Brendan Byrne Arena,'' he said referring to the indoor arena in the Hackensack Meadowlands in East Rutherford, N.J., that was named after Mr. Byrne while he was Governor of New Jersey. ''It's not going to be the Hugh Carey Astrodome. It's not going to be the Mario M. Cuomo Palestra.''

Once a sprawling and weakly profitable conglomerate, operating in sugar, food, land and retailing, Amfac Inc. today is slimming down. And with its overhaul firmly begun, first-quarter earnings of $6.2 million ''represent a renewal of profitability'' after a $68 million loss in 1983, Amfac's chief executive, Myron Du Bain, says. In the year that Mr. Du Bain has been chief executive of the old-line Hawaiian company, Amfac has undergone a startling transformation. Gone is the aloha spirit personified by Henry A. Walker, the casual former chief executive who diversified the 134-year-old company and moved its headquarters to San Francisco from Honolulu. Gone, too, is the unmanageable sprawl. In January, Amfac announced the divestiture of 12 percent of its assets, worth about $177 million.

A major Soviet-led offensive overran a valley north of Kabul that had been an Afghan guerrilla stronghold for years, according to an official broadcast from Afghanistan. It was the sixth attempt, since Soviet forces entered Afghanistan in late 1979, to clear insurgents from the Panjshir Valley. (Page A1, Column 4.) Price rioting took the lives of at least 26 people in the Dominican Republic as mobs battled the police in a second day of protests over price increases on all imported goods and many basic foodstuffs. The Government closed all schools and shut down a radio station. (A1:5.)

Because of a transcription error, a dispatch on Monday from Munich, West Germany, incorrectly rendered one word in quoting J"urgen Todenh"ofer, disarmament expert for the governing Christian Democratic Party. He called demonstrators against the arms race and against new American missiles ''useful idiots of the Soviet Union.''

The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled today that the Reagan Administration had acted improperly in suspending standards of tire wear intended to help consumers. The court said the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration acted in an arbitrary and capricious manner last year when it suspended the requirement that the estimated mileage life be embossed on the tire's side. If the agency does not appeal the ruling, it can either reinstitute the tire grading system or ask for comments and start on the process toward a new set of rules. Judge Abner J. Mikva, who wrote the decision, said it was ''hard to imagine a more sorry performance of a Congressional mandate'' than that of the traffic safety agency.

An official broadcast from Afghanistan said yesterday that a major Sovi et-led offensive had overrun a valley north of the capital that had been a guerrilla stronghold for years. This was the sixth attempt, since Soviet forces entered Afghanistan in late 1979, to clear rebels from the Panjshir Valley, which is roughly 70 miles long and runs northeast from a point 50 miles north of Kabul, the capital. The drive, intelligence sources in Washington and London said, has been backed by high-level saturation bombing, the heaviest air strikes against the insurgents to date. Truce Ended in January The intelligence experts said they could not entirely accept the Afghan statement that the rebels had been driven from the valley. But the experts said they believed the Russians, after the past setbacks, would not allow the Afghans to make sweeping statements if they were not generally true.

Britain deported a 34-year-old Libyan radical today who was described as the chief personal representative in this country of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, the Libyan leader. The representative, Abdul Khadir Baghdadi, who was placed on a Libyan Arab Airlines flight to Tripoli this afternoon, was the secretary of the four- man ''revolutionary committee'' that took over the embassy in February and rechristened it the Libyan People's Bureau. A second member, Saleh Ibrahim Mabruk, was sent home on Monday, and a third, Matooq Matooq, is being sought by Scotland Yard. The fourth member, identified as Ali Abujazieh, is believed to have returned to Libya.

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 25, 1984 The Economy Consumer prices rose just 0.2 percent last month. The Government attributed the slim gain, the smallest since December, to declines in the prices of food and heating oil, reversing weather-related increases earlier in the winter. For the 12 months ended March 31, prices increased 4.7 percent. (Page A1.) In the New York-northeastern New Jersey area, costs rose 0.3 percent. (D7.)