What was going on when I was born?

Bruce Crawford, who was elected president of the Metropolitan Opera in May, will give up that title and become the company's general manager, according to high-ranking Met officials. The general manager is the principal administrative officer of the Met, America's largest and most important opera company. Mr. Crawford's appointment continues a tendency over the past decade for members of the board of directors to become Met administrators, and will end a prolonged period of uncertainty about the administrative future of the company. Mr. Crawford is currently president and chief executive officer of BBDO International, the world's seventh-largest advertising agency. Before becoming president of the Met in May, he had been a board member since 1976.

As the cold cuts were being prepared for an informal political supper, Representative Bob Edgar made a strong pitch to 50 people in a living room for help in his campaign and that of Representative Peter H. Kostmayer, a fellow Democrat. Their suburban Philadelphia districts, he said, must ''make the right choice on Nov. 6, as it relates to Bob Edgar and Peter Kostmayer, and as it regards national policy.'' Not a word about Walter F. Mondale or Geraldine A. Ferraro. An Intentional Distancing Asked about that omission, Mr. Edgar, a former Methodist pastor who must get up to 60,000 Republican votes to survive this year, said, ''There were Republicans in there, and you have to appeal to people where they are politically.'' Like Democrats in sharply contested districts around the country, Mr. Edgar and Mr. Kostmayer are putting distance between themselves and their Presidential ticket, cushioning themselves against a possible Reagan landslide.

The throngs of reporters and television crews at the White House today attested to the worldwide interest in President Reagan's meeting with the Soviet Foreign Minister, Andrei A. Gromyko. But two audiences were described as uppermost on Mr. Reagan's mind: the Russians and the Americans. Administration officials quickly characterized the meeting as successful in communicating the President's message of readiness to have a new relationship with Moscow. Yet they acknowledged that it would take time for it to become clear that reduced tensions are possible.

Basil A. Paterson said yesterday that he would not be a candidate for Mayor in 1985. Mr. Paterson, a former Deputy Mayor and New York Secretary of State, said he had called off his undeclared but much-discussed and already well-financed campaign because of ''pressing family problems.'' His decision left the group of politicians who are seeking a black to run against Mayor Koch without a candidate. Friends of the other elected citywide officials - Council President Carol Bellamy and Comptroller Harrison J. Goldin - promptly began assessing the altered political landscape.

The Pentagon's inspector general said today that Defense Department officials had used oversimplified and misleading test results in deciding to produce the Army's Sergeant York antiaircraft gun. In testimony before the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, Joseph H. Sherick, the inspector general, said an unusual program to accelerate the purchase of the gun had ''afforded minimal test information to the Government.'' He said the Army had given Defense Department officials charts purporting to show that the gun possessed ''a high level of effectiveness at long range'' and reacted rapidly to threats. These charts, he added, ''were oversimplified and, therefore, misleading and based on a selective analysis of the results'' of field trials.

President Reagan and Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko held what was called a ''forceful and direct'' discussion today of the sharp differences between the United States and the Soviet Union. After the three-and-a-half-hour White House meeting and lunch, it was announced that Secretary of State George P. Shultz and Mr. Gromyko would hold further talks Saturday at the State Department. Mr. Shultz and Mr. Gromyko met for three hours in New York on Wednesday. Mr. Shultz, who spoke to reporters after the White House meeting, said Mr. Reagan and Mr. Gromyko had repeated their known positions at some length and with some force. He did not hold out the likelihood of an early narrowing of the gap between the two nations.

President Reagan told the Senate Republican leadership today that he would forgo enactment of a crime-fighting package that he wanted in order to obtain a catchall spending measure without any riders. Three disparate measures - the crime bill, a civil rights bill and $24 billion in water projects - have been offered as amendments to the spending bill. The proposed riders have clouded the prospects of the catchall resolution to continue spending, which is needed to keep most Government agencies operating in the new fiscal year that begins Monday. The House linked the crime bill and the water projects to its version of the spending bill, while a Senate effort to attach a civil rights measure to its version of the bill has created a deadlock in that chamber. Reagan Offers a Trade Mr. Reagan in effect offered to trade his loss of the crime bill for killing the water projects, which he deems too costly, and the civil rights measure, which he said did not belong on the spending bill.

-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - Over the last year, President Jean-Claude Duvalier has promised some dramatic improvements in human rights. But he has retreated nearly as often as he has advanced and the result has been little net gain for Haitians who live in fear and poverty in a police state created more than a quarter of a century ago by the President's father, Francois (Papa Doc) Duvalier. After an exhilarating few months in which the 32-year-old President promised ''free, honest and clean'' elections for a National Assembly and issued widely publicized orders to end arbitrary arrest, torture and other abuses by the security forces, the editor and publisher of a weekly newspaper was arrested and beaten up, two other critics were placed under house arrest and another went into hiding in fear of his life, according to relatives. In early August, about two months after being beaten, the editor, Pierre Robert Auguste, was permitted to resume publishing his weekly, L'Information. But diplomats say the newspaper has been far less critical of the Government since its reappearance.

Libyan troops have not begun withdrawing from Chad, as called for in an agreement with France, Chad's Information Minister says. France, which started to pull back on Tuesday, has withdrawn troops and military equipment from its outposts at Salal and Arada south to Biltine and Moussoro, about 150 miles northeast of the capital, Ndjamena.

Abdu el-Daim Mohammed Mahmoud, a 72-year-old Egyptian, is a bellhop. For 10 years, he has supported his family back in Cairo by sweeping floors, carrying suitcases, emptying ashtrays and sharing a small, dank room with three other workers at the delapidated hotel in Tripoli that employs him. As he nears his 73d birthday, he says he hopes to celebrate it with his wife, daughter and four sons in Egypt. After a decade as a foreign worker in Libya, Mr. Mahmoud is going home.

Opposition leaders said today that it appeared that as many as 11 participants in an anti- Government demonstration Thursday had been killed after the rally was broken up by the police. Jose Castro, a lawyer and one of the rally organizers, said indications were ''quite strong'' that 11 bodies found at various locations near downtown Manila since Thursday night were those of protesters. An officer of the Manila Police Department homicide division, Sgt. Villamor Valdez, refused to comment on the statements made by Mr. Castro and other opposition figures. He said that the police had just begun their investigation and that the dead had not been identified.

South Africa has indicated that it is acting as a mediator between Mozambique's avowedly Marxist Government and the rebellious army seeking to unseat it, which is said to be seeking a cease-fire. In statements in the last two days, South Africa's Foreign Minister, Roelof F. Botha, has said delegations from the two sides are in Pretoria. There has been no suggestion that they have held face-to-face meetings. The leader of the rebellious Mozambique National Resistance, Alfonso Dhlakama, has told South African radio that ''I have to come South Africa to try to negotiate a cease-fire arrangement with Mozambique.''