What was going on when I was born?

She is the forgotten member of the Democratic quartet. With the unusual attention focused on the party's historic campaign - a floodlight illuminating Walter F. Mondale, Geraldine A. Ferraro and John A. Zaccaro - Joan Mondale is often asked about eclipses. Has Mrs. Ferraro eclipsed Mr. Mondale as the strongest member of the ticket? Has Mrs. Ferraro eclipsed Mrs. Mondale as the leading female star of the ticket? ''The whole thing is certainly making Joan Mondale take a back seat,'' said Daryl Glenney, a Washington campaign consultant. ''For the first time in our minds, the female can be the Vice- Presidential candidate, she doesn't have to be 'the wife' any more. That leaves the wife wondering what her role is.''

The nation's overall unemployment rate held steady at 7.4 percent last month, the level recorded in May and in July, the Labor Department reported today. Analysts said the report indicated that the economy, while still expanding, had moved into a new, slower phase and had exhausted its ability to produce more new jobs than there are job-seekers entering the labor force. In human terms, it means that the economy's 20-month recovery has stabilized and is no longer reducing the national unemployment rate. Even in New York City, New York State and New Jersey, where unemployment did decline last month, officials said the local economies were showing less ''zip'' than they did earlier in the year. (Page 42.)

As in a crude science-fiction film, the removal of asbestos from buildings involves a combination of the ordinary and the fantastic, of old-fashioned elbow grease and high technology. The process so bedeviled school systems and the state government in New Jersey this summer that about 20 schools were unable to open on schedule this week. The schools failed to obtain state certification that their asbestos-removal projects were complete. Asbestos fibers have been found to cause cancer if inhaled. At best, removing the material from buildings is complicated, expensive and dangerous. Some experts liken the proper procedures to those for handling radioactive materials in the nuclear industry.

Mexico announced today that it had reached agreement with its bank advisory group to stretch out repayment of much of its $66 billion in public debt over 14 years at lower interest rates. The agreement, announced by the Mexican Finance Minister, Jesus Silva Herzog, would constitute the most flexible restructuring of foreign obligations thus far granted to a Latin American debtor country. At a news conference here, Mr. Silva Herzog said that the agreement was ''in no way a panacea,'' but called it ''a relief, a breather and indisputably a step in the right direction.'' He said he hoped it would give support to other Latin America debtor countries in their negotiations with foreign creditors.

A senior Iranian official with close ties to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini has suggested that Iran's long-planned ''final offensive'' against Iraq may not take place anytime soon. The statement, by the Speaker of the Iranian Parliament, Hojatolislam Hashemi Rafsanjani, was believed to be the first in which a high-ranking Iranian official has openly talked about the timing of the ''offensive'' since Iranian troops began to mass on the border with Iraq last February. For months Western military analysts had predicted an imminent all-out invasion of Iraq, but Iran said nothing about the reports. 'Delay in Operations' In an interview broadcast by the Teheran radio Thursday, the Iranian official, who is the Ayatollah's personal representative on the Iranian Supreme Defense Council, was asked why there had been a ''delay in operations.''

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 1984 International Mexico's foreign debt payments will be extended over 14 years at lower interest rates under an agreement reached by the Government with its bank advisory group. The agreement, would constitute the most flexible restructuring of foreign obligations thus far granted to a Latin American debtor country. (Page 1, Column 5.) Four Cuban military advisers died last Saturday during a Nicaraguan rebel air raid in which two private American citizens were also killed, senior Reagan Administration officials asserted. They said the Cubans were killed in the rebel attack on a military training school in Santa Clara, near the Honduran border, that serves as a center for Cuban advisers in Nicaragua. (1:2.)

''Oh, what do women talk about? She liked my new red dress.

A state appeals court, rejecting Republican contentions of ''irreparable harm,'' cleared at least a temporary path yesterday for Governor Cuomo's plan to use state offices and employees to help register new voters. The court did not rule on the merits of the plan, but simply refused to go along with a lower court's injunction against it. The Governor, a Democrat, promptly announced that his plan would be put into effect Monday at more than 100 offices and would soon be extended to 300 more. Republican leaders said they would file an appeal with the highest court in the state, the Court of Appeals.

Four senior Cuban military advisers in Nicaragua were killed last Saturday during a Nicaraguan rebel air raid in which two private American citizens died, senior Reagan Administration officials said today. They said the target of the air strike, a military training school in Santa Clara, near the Honduran border, served as a center for Cuban advisers in Nicaragua. Nicaragua Denies Report At the time of the raid, the officials said, there were more than 200 Cubans and several Libyans at the site. They said there might have been more Cuban casualties.

The nomination of Edwin Meese 3d to be Attorney General will not be considered by the Senate this year, an aide to the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee said today. Senator Strom Thurmond, the South Carolina Republican who is the committee chairman, removed the nomination from the committee's agenda to keep it from becoming ''politicized,'' according to Mark Goodin, the Senator's press secretary. ''There was a very deep concern that other committee members would request additional hearings,'' Mr. Goodin said. ''There was a strong indication that the nomination would be politicized.''

Lev Y. Kerbel, a sculptor, drew his first portrait of Lenin at the age of 6, and he has continued ever since. Over the years his works, almost always to the glorification of Communism, have grown ever more elaborate, ever more celebrated, ever more monumental. Today he is in the final stages of creating his masterwork, a monument to Lenin that will reach about half the height of the Statue of Liberty and will form the centerpiece of a grand square now under reconstruction in central Moscow. It is a project he says he has been working on for 20 years, and one that has confounded Moscow city planners for even longer, as one grandiose plan for a Lenin monument after another has been abandoned. When Mr. Kerbel's statue is unveiled some time in early 1986, it will include a 28-foot bronze statue of Lenin atop a mammoth pink-granite pedestal surrounded by 13 figures whose triumphal poses will depict aspects of the Russian Revolution of 1917.

Diplomats studying the announcement of Marshal Nikolai V. Ogarkov's replacement as Chief of Staff of the Soviet armed forces leaned increasingly today to the conclusion that he had been dismissed. But the Kremlin offered no further explanation for the abrupt removal of Marshal Ogarkov, who was seen in the West as a competent and self-assured professional soldier with prospects of becoming Defense Minister and gaining a seat in the Politburo. Soviet sources reached by diplomats and correspondents were unable or unwilling to explain the change of command or Marshal Ogarkov's new status.