What was going on when I was born?

''That's the way it works every year. The stoplights are turned on, they have time to flash once or twice, and then it's time to turn them off.

An Associated Press dispatch from Boston Aug. 17 about an agreement by the General Services Administration to donate and sell waterfront land to the town of Nantucket misstated the political affiliation and hometown of State Senator Paul Doane. He is a Republican from Harwich.

Mayor Koch said yesterday that his administration would stand by the results of the latest police sergeants examination, despite the high failure rate among black and Hispanic officers who took the test. Figures made public last week showed that only 1.6 percent of the black candidates and 4.4 percent of the Hispanic candidates earned passing grades, compared with 10.6 percent of the white officers who took the test, which was given in June 1983. The Guardians Association, a group of black police officers, called on the Police Department to either reject the results or base promotions to sergeant on a quota system instead of on the list of officers who passed the test. The Guardians did not say the test itself was discriminatory, but said the results had a discriminatory impact.

The Economy The economic news is all good for President Reagan in this election year, with interest rates, inflation and unemployment all working to support his policies. But Democratic challenger Walter F. Mondale will try to show that the prosperity in the figures is illusory and threatened by future budget deficits. (Page D1.)

On his office bookshelf, Jaime V. Ongpin keeps a copy of ''Managing in Turbulent Times'' by the American management expert Peter Drucker. ''It makes for pretty tame reading around here these days,'' Mr. Ongpin said, grinning. With a depressed economy, a growing Communist insurgency and the Government of President Ferdinand E. Marcos the target of reformist pressures, the times are unsettled indeed in the Philippines. And Mr. Ongpin, probably more than any other member of the Manila business establishment, has chosen to place himself in the midst of the turbulence.

In the late 1960's when stock prices jumped wildly and volume soared, the movers and shakers of the securities world were the portfolio managers of equity mutual funds. These days, with interest-rate gyrations so crucial, their counterparts at money market mutual funds, who control assets of $180 billion, are at center stage. These funds, which invest in short- term money market instruments, have become enormously popular with individual investors since interest rates began to soar in 1979. The funds allow individuals to benefit from high-yielding securities in denominations of $100,000 and more. The instruments include certificates of deposit, bankers acceptances, commercial paper and Government securities. This year the average maturities of all the funds has ranged from 35 to 38 days. On average, the assets are turned over nine to 12 times a year, making the managers a formidable force indeed.

Government officials said today that two men killed when Nicaragua shot down a rebel helicopter were American mercenaries apparently recruited by rebel sympathizers to make up for the withdrawal of official American aid. The two men, who were killed on Saturday, have not been identified. A senior White House official traveling with President Reagan said today that they were part of a group of seven Americans who had recently flown to Honduras in a private jet and apparently had volunteered to help the rebels. The official did not identify any of the Americans, but did say none of them worked for the United States Government.

GLADSTONE, MO. H UNDREDS of people with a broad range of ailments, including problems they say were caused by Agent Orange, are coming here for a costly therapy that proponents view as a miracle cure. Critics contend it can be extremely dangerous and, in some cases, lethal. The McDonagh Medical Clinic here offers chelation therapy, in which a mild acid sometimes used as a food preservative is injected into the patient's bloodstream. Chelation (kee-LAY-shun) has been used sporadically since the 1940's, but it is enjoying a new surge of popularity amid enthusiastic claims from patients that it can eliminate the need for coronary bypass surgery and give relief to Vietnam veterans exposed to dioxin in the form of Agent Orange. Dr. Edward W. McDonagh, a 53-year-old osteopath who has opened chelation clinics in several Middle Western states in the past two months, says the therapy has cured or controlled ailments in thousands of Americans, ranging from heart disease to arthritis to poor eyesight.

When John W. Poduska was unable to get the research funding he wanted at the company he co-founded, Prime Computer, he stormed out in 1979 and headed for a skiing vacation. But, as computer-industry aficionados tell the story, on the way to ski he took a detour to San Francisco. Flying there, he wrote a business plan for making a microcomputer that engineers and other scientists could use at their desk to do graphics- oriented design work. Within a week of landing, he raised $1.7 million in venture money - the seed capital for what came to be called Apollo Computer Inc.

President Reagan is assured of running on one of the strongest election year economies ever. Interest rates are holding steady. Inflation is 4 percent, far below the levels of the Carter Administration, and unemployment has dropped by 3.2 percentage points from the recession high of 10.6 near the end of 1982. Nonetheless, Walter F. Mondale, the Democratic challenger, is indicting Reaganomics. He will press his claim that the prosperity the President sees in these numbers is illusory, and threatened by future Federal budget deficits that could reach $200 billion before the end of the decade.

The American Telephone and Telegraph Company, despite service backlogs and increased competition, has moved closer in recent months to its maximum authorized profit margin for interstate long-distance telephone service. A company spokesman said last week that A.T.& T.'s rate of return, or profit margin, on long-distance telephone service was 12.36 percent after the first seven months of 1984. The maximum authorized margin is 12.75 percent annually, based on A.T.& T.'s investment in equipment. Formal reports filed by A.T.& T. with the Federal Communications Commission show the company actually exceeded its authorized margin during the quarter ended June 30, but it fell substantially below the maximum rate during the first quarter.

N ew examinations of bones and stones nearly two million years old have forced many scientists to abandon a cornerstone theory about the social behavior of man's ancient ancestors. As a result, the early history of human culture is being rewritten. Recent analyses of fossils from Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, one of the world's best-known archeological sites, suggest that the hunter-gatherer life style might have developed later in human history than previously thought, and that the social patterns associated with that way of life might be less central to ''humanness'' than is often asserted. Scientists are now developing new theories about how human ancestors actually lived. For more than two decades, aggregations of animal bones and stone tools found buried beneath the soils of East Africa have been described as the remains of campsites in which groups of humanlike creatures clustered together for safety and to share food. Social interaction centered around such a ''home base,'' a characteristic of the hunter-gatherer bands in which virtually all people lived in the millenia preceding the advent of agriculture, has been considered a key distinction between human ancestors, or hominids, and other animals.