What was going on when I was born?

''PAT RYAN? It's America. It's the opportunity. But when you get it, don't let it pass you by.'' The speaker, with some fervor, was Joe Fields, the Jets' center. Pat Ryan is everyman in sneakers. His story is the kind they don't make anymore: the back-up quarterback rescued from obscurity to lead a team to victory. Last Sunday, when Ryan was sprawled on the ground, his head throbbing from a whack on the side of the jaw by a Patriot helmet, the Jets' orthopedist, Dr. James A. Nicholas, ran onto the field.

People are really very perverse. There is on Manhattan Island, north of 52d Street and all the way up to Fort Tryon Park, as dense and as various a concentration of great art on a permanent basis as can be found anywhere in the world. Inch by inch, and gamut by gamut, there is no capital city of which we need be envious, though there are many that we long to visit. And our situation gets better year by year. New buildings go up, new collections come in, individual masterpieces arrive almost by stealth. Yet what do strangers ask when they come in from out of town? And what is it that the professional critic of art most often hears from his neighbor at dinner? ''What's the new blockbuster?,'' they say nine times out of ten, and if there doesn't happen to be one they pull a face. Everything about that question is exasperating. The very word ''blockbuster'' should be outlawed. The Random House dictionary defines it as ''an aerial bomb containing high explosives and weighing from four to eight tons, used as a large-scale demolition bomb.'' What kind of metaphor is that for some of the subtlest, most fragile and yet most constructive of human enterprises? Nothing can condone the use of that loathsome word, with its implications of brutish and indiscriminate massacre.

An enormous throng of Poles stood and prayed for more than three hours today as a slain Roman Catholic priest was buried with eulogies from the leaders of the church he served and the Solidarity movement he championed. The slayers of the priest, the Rev. Jerzy Popieluszko, have been identified as three security police officers. On Friday the Government said two others had been detained and a general had been suspended in connection with the case. As people clung to trees and perched on canted roofs to glimpse the plain coffin in front of a parish church, Jozef Cardinal Glemp, the Primate, praised the 37-year-old priest as a martyr who had entered Polish history.

When Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher attended the funeral of Indira Gandhi in New Delhi today, she was accompanied by armed guards who had flown to India with her. In Paris, tourists are no longer permitted to stand on the sidewalk in the Rue du Faubourg St. Honore and gaze into the courtyard of Elysee Palace to watch the official comings and goings at the presidential residence. The heavy green doors of the palace, which used to be open, are now chained closed at all times. A few hours before Oscar Luigi Scalfaro, the Italian Interior Minister, held a news conference in Rome last week, two plainclothesmen minutely inspected the meeting room. Mr. Scalfaro arrived for the session with five or six bodyguards. No Longer in Doubt As those three episodes suggest, world political leaders are finding it more and more necessary to adopt rigorous measures to protect themselves against terrorists and assassins. Some European security people still think the United States Secret Service is heavy-handed and occasionally almost hysterical - the Irish police were appalled by some of the measures taken during President Reagan's European trip last summer - but they no longer question the need for elaborate protective arrangements.

ATLANTIC CITY THE president of the New Jersey chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the director of affirmative action and planning for the state's Casino Control Commission have accused the hotel-casino industry here of failing to live up to a voluntary commitment to channel at least 15 percent of their buying to minority vendors. ''Volunteerism in this area has failed,'' said Jack E. Wood, the commission official. ''We know of no other meaningful answer than legislation that would compel compliance.'' Mr. Wood said he had discussed legislation with some lawmakers and was preparing to urge the commission to join in the effort.

AS condominiums move increasingly into the mainstream of primary shelter in the metropolitan area, vexing problems of assessment and taxation are growing. Specialists in the field say the problems are the result of housing history and state law and are unlikely to be resolved soon. ''There are tough, practical problems,'' said Joseph P. McCale, counsel to the Temporary State Commission on the Real Property Tax. Taken together, these problems suggest a widening inequity among various classes of taxpayers. Statewide, for example, condominium owners pay an average one- third less tax than do owners of single-family homes of comparable market value. Nonoccupying owners of condominiums who rent them out on the free market also have an advantage over owners of controlled or stabilized rental buildings, an inequity that is magnified in some communities as condominium values rise and rental values are held back by rent regulations.

IN two days, the people will take over from the poll takers as the sovereign arbiters of the political fates of President Reagan and Walter F. Mondale. Some commentators insist that opinion polls and the dominance of television have conspired to make this election a footnote to a process that has already declared Mr. Reagan the winner. But no one who has spent a lot of time talking to voters is likely to buy such arguments about the malleability of the 80 million to 100 million Americans expected to vote Tueday. Elections finally get down to a human process - people choosing which of two candidates they like better. Often, the choice can have as much to do with feelings and with emerging demographic trends as with issues. If nothing else, the Reagan-Mondale campaign has brought these dimensions of the political process into sharp focus.

Doug Flutie today became the first player in college football to gain 10,000 yards in career total offense. But the scrambling little quarterback and his Boston College teammates lost to Penn State, 37-30. Pressured constantly by Penn State defenses, Flutie fumbled twice, was intercepted twice and was sacked four times. The four turnovers and the sacks prevented Eagle scores and sent Boston College's record to 5-2. The Nittany Lions, led by the running of D. J. Dozier (143 yards) and Steve Smith (126 yards), improved to 6-3.

Since SoHo's emergence as a neighborhood of chic galleries, restaurants, shops, and residential lofts, the cost of space there has soared and many of the pioneering artists who rediscovered the area more than 10 years ago have been squeezed out. While space in SoHo will probably never again be cheap, the rental situation for some working artists and gallery-owners has been eased a bit with the transformation of a former industrial building at Broadway and Prince Streets, on the district's eastern edge, into reasonably priced gallery and studio space.

A DIP IN PRODUCER PRICES There will be few cheers in financial circles when the Producer Price Index for October appears next Wednesday. The index, which over the past year has been virtually flat, is expected to show a decline of one-tenth of 1 percent for the month. That would be good news for prices, but not for profits. ''The flat index helps explain the erosion in third-quarter corporate profits, which fell by $10 billion,'' said David D. Hale, chief economist at Kemper Financial Services, Chicago. A rising tide of low-cost imports has prevented domestic producers from raising prices, Mr. Hale said. He also suggested that the index's drop means that business is being hurt by interest rates - a problem that economists have been on the lookout for during much of the recovery period. ''Our economy may be losing its ability to live with high real interest rates,'' he said. Traditionally, producers shoulder high rates and pass them on to customers in the form of higher prices. ''But this magic circle is now crumbling, along with corporate earnings.''

Eighteen seconds remained when John Carney kicked a 44-yard field goal today that enabled Notre Dame to overtake Navy, 18-17, at Giants Stadium. But how many seconds remained on the 25-second clock when Carney kicked the ball? Gary Tranquill, the Navy coach, insisted that time had expired, in which case the Irish should have been penalized 5 yards for delay of game. The 25- second clock tracks the time remaining before the next play must be run.

NEW DELHI INDIRA Gandhi dominated the political life of India for nearly two decades, but when she was cut down last week by two Sikh bodyguards outside her home, she left a legacy of profound uncertainty. As Mrs. Gandhi's body was cremated yesterday before hundreds of thousands of mourners, the world's biggest democracy found itself under the leadership of a 40- year-old former airline pilot, whose ambition only a few years ago had been to qualify on a Boeing jet. A reluctant politician, Rajiv Gandhi brings to the immense task before him a resonant name - and exactly three years of political experience as his mother's understudy. Elevated in dynastic succession, the slain Prime Minister's son must govern an India sorely tested by violence.