What was going on when I was born?

''THE problem is not so much that people are cruel,'' said Archie Jamgotchian. ''It's just hard to get them to believe that animals have rights too. They're not a commodity you know, to use today and throw away tomorrow.'' There was exasperation in the voice of Mr. Jamgotchian, president of the Little Guild of St. Francis for the Welfare of Animals, a volunteer-staffed animal shelter in Cornwall, Conn. There was a sadness too, as he spoke of animal abandonment, a practice that is prevalent at this time of the year in resort and vacation communities. ''Dogs and cats are part of this world too,'' he said.

The opposition Progressive Conservative Party of Brian Mulroney scored a huge victory over the Liberal Party of Prime Minister John N. Turner today in voting for a new national government. With some results in from every district, the Tories were elected or leading in 211 of the 282 districts nationwide, the Liberals in 40, the New Democratic Party in 30 and an independent in one. The independent, elected in metropolitan Toronto, has said he will turn Tory in the near future. ''Canada has responded to a call to unity,'' Mr. Mulroney told a crowd of widely cheering supporters in his hometown of Baie Comeau. He said the party's mandate was ''to create jobs and get the economy of Canada moving again.'' Mr. Mulroney won his own district of Manicouagan in Quebec's north shore.

An article in Metropolitan Report yesterday about plans to donate photographic archives of the George Eastman House in Rochester to the Smithsonian Institution misidentified the director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. He is Roger G. Kennedy.

Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, who on Sunday marked the 15th anniversary of the military coup that brought him to power, appears to have consolidated his hold over the country in the wake of an attempt to topple him last May, according to Western and Arab residents here. But they say that thousands of Libyans have been arrested or detained since May and that resistance to Colonel Qaddafi's radical economic and social policies is growing. ''Colonel Qaddafi is in control, but his basic support is getting narrower,'' one longtime Western resident said. ''He is a leader increasingly at war with his own country.'' According to the Western and Arab residents, the instruments of the deepening political repression are Colonel Qaddafi's ''revolutionary committees,'' about 300 or 400 civilians who act as guardians of the revolution. The members of the committees are broken into smaller groups.

''This was not a day of Titanic proportions. Maybe just Lusitania.''

When Alfred B. DelBello was the Mayor of Yonkers, he recommended that his job be abolished. He had a fancy title, Mr. DelBello reasoned, but the power was held by others - the City Manager and the City Council. ''I found it personally very difficult when someone came to me and said, 'Fix the street,' '' he recalled . ''It wasn't my job to fix the street.'' Much the same reasoning has been applied by some students of government to Mr. DelBello's current job as Lieutenant Governor of New York.

As hints of autumn turn attention to fuel bills, energy experts have good news for consumers of heating oil: Prices are far below last winter's peak and are expected to rise little, if at all, in the coming heating season. The decline in heating oil prices means that, for the first time in several years, the cost of heating a home with fuel oil in some areas is approaching the lower cost of heating with natural gas. The cost of gas heating next winter, however, is less certain. Federal price controls for much of the nation's natural gas are due to expire Jan. 1. Estimates of how that will affect home heating costs range from a slight price drop (forecast by some industry experts) to increases of more than 10 percent (forecast by consumer groups).

Reaching back with a long robotic arm, the crew of the space shuttle Discovery knocked a troublesome chunk of ice off the side of the orbiting craft today to clear the way for the conclusion of a six-day mission in space. The winged spaceship was scheduled to drop out of orbit and glide to a touchdown on a desert runway here Wednesday at 9:38 A.M., Eastern daylight time. Except for the ice accumulation, which never posed a threat to the crew but could have damaged the spaceship in re-entry, the first flight of the Discovery was being acclaimed a complete success. Space agency officials said that all the mission objectives were achieved: the launching of three communications satellites, testing an extendable solar-power array, producing a hormone sample in weightlessness and checking the performance of the third shuttle in the nation's fleet of re-usable space vehicles. In Washington, however, a National Research Council panel said that, for all its successes, the shuttle could not provide as much flexibility for military launchings as a system of both shuttles and expendable rockets.

A collaborative effort by American computer companies, mobilized to head off the Japanese attack on the critical high-technology markets of the 1990's, has gotten off to a rocky start. While the consortium, the Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation, or M.C.C., is beginning to make progress, most of its participants say that in its first 18 months it has yet to usher in the new age of co- operation needed to match Japan's Government-sponsored efforts to dominate those markets. Some, in fact, say the project's effectiveness could be sapped by competitive jealousies. From the start, M.C.C.'s roster of participants has included many of the hottest names in the business. Bobby R. Inman, the retired admiral whose long careers at the Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency had immersed him in the most advanced computer technology, was recruited to head the project.

A report in the Briefing column of the Washington Talk page on Wednesday about support for Walter F. Mondale from the League of Conservation Voters misstated the league's relationship with the Natural Resources Defense Council. The council does not have a political arm and does not engage in electoral politics. Its role is discussed further today in the Briefing column, on page B6.

EVERY time someone in the Greater New York area bites into a banana (one of 386 million pounds every year), slices an onion (one of 171 million pounds) or broils a steak (one of about 500 million pounds), he or she represents the final link in a long, bafflingly complex yet amazingly efficient chain of events that brings food from distant farms and ranches to the collective metropolitan table. Chances are the typical consumer is unaware of how the system works. That is how it should be if everything is rolling smoothly, as it almost always is in one of the world's largest food markets and surely the most multifarious. The focal point of fruit, vegetable and to a lesser extent meat distribution in the metropolitan area is the Hunts Point Food Distribution Center, commonly referred to simply as Hunts Point. ''This country has the most efficient system for getting food to consumers of any country in the world,'' said Stephen D'Arrigo, whose produce company bearing his family name is the largest wholesaler in Hunts Point. ''This market is New York's part of it,'' he said.

In many small grocery stores here these days, customers cannot buy a pound of flour unless they also buy some canned goods or perhaps some detergent. The Jamaicans refer to this mandatory combining of purchases as ''marrying'' goods. It is a technique that the merchants here, renowned in the Caribbean for their trading prowess, devised years ago as a means of getting rid of slow- moving items at a time of frequent shortages of such basic foods as flour and rice. The shortages are one of many symptoms of a long-term economic crisis that most of the 2.3 million Jamaicans have begun to feel deeply only in the last few months as the Government has instituted a severe austerity program.