What was going on when I was born?

The Giants were fortunate their game against the New Orleans Saints today could not affect their chances to make the playoffs. They played ineffectively on offense and erratically on defense, committed too many penalties and allowed too many sacks, and they lost, 10-3. The Giants finished their regular season with a 9-7 record. They will make the National Football League playoffs only if the Washington Redskins defeat the St. Louis Cardinals Sunday and the Miami Dolphins beat the Dallas Cowboys Monday night. If that happens, the Giants will play the Los Angeles Rams in a wild-card game next weekend in Anaheim, Calif.

When Robert Bauer made his regular visit to his wife's hospital bedside one morning last year, he had no inkling what was about to happen, how it would change his life forever and end his wife's. For two years his wife, Emily, had suffered from Lou Gehrig's disease, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a gradual but relentless disease of the spinal cord that results in complete paralysis and eventual death. She could not talk any more. She had a screen on her table and a switch by her pillow, which she could nudge with her head to laboriously print out a typed message. Mrs. Bauer could not swallow, so tubes up her nose carried nutrition to her stomach. She could not breath by herself, so a respirator pumped air into her lungs through a hole in her throat. She could not control other body functions either.

RALPH ACOSTA JR. can tell when winter has arrived - not by the calendar, not by the weather but by the heightened public interest in the homeless. ''It's almost as though the season makes the problem,'' said Dr. Acosta, who is program director at the county-sponsored shelter for homeless men and women, run by the Volunteers of America at the Westchester County Airport, ''That's a conception we'd really like to change,'' said the Rev. Rayner W. Hesse Jr., the priest in charge of St. Andrew's Episcopal Church in Hartsdale and the president of the Coalition for the Homeless of Westchester. The group of county charitable, civic and religious organizations was formed in August last year to act as an advocate and a resource for the homeless. ''It's not a winter problem,'' Father Hesse said. ''It's a year-round problem that's increasing. The fact that people are cold and need a place to stay cannot be denied. But there are cold nights during the summer, too, and if you have no food and no place to go, you have as much chance of dying then as in the winter.''

The accident at the pesticide plant in Bhopal that killed at least 2,000 people has obscured the fact that pesticides have also brought better health to millions of people in India and other third world countries, according to international food and health officials here. The risk of such accidents and the more usual concern that pesticides may harm farmers or contaminate food and water supplies must be balanced against their value, according to these experts. Output Greatly Increased In the last two decades, they say, India has increased its grain output thanks partly to the application of pesticides. The green revolution, which has made India largely self-sufficient in food, was based on the development of high-yield strains of wheat and rice that required irrigation and fertilizers.

THIS is Rickey Henderson: 'He took off from second base with the pitch,'' Butch Wynegar related, recalling his most vivid memory of a Henderson escapade. ''It was a fastball right down the middle that the hitter took. When I caught the ball, he was barely reaching halfway between second and third. When I came up to throw, I remember thinking to myself, 'I got him, I got him.' I made a perfect, chest- high throw to Nettles, but by the time the ball got there, he was sliding in safe. I swear he accelerated like I have never seen anyone accelerate. I stood there bewildered. I was in awe.'' This is Rickey Henderson: Dave McKay was at first base for Oakland when Henderson bunted the ball hard through the grass on the right side of the Yankee Stadium infield. Tom Underwood, the pitcher, dived for the ball but missed it. Jim Spencer, the first baseman, had charged toward the plate with the pitch and helplessly watched the ball roll past him. With the Yankees playing for a force at second, Dennis Sherrill, the second baseman, broke for the base and was nowhere near the ball as it rolled across the infield dirt and toward the outfield grass. The ball barely reached the grass, but Henderson easily reached second with a bunt double.

What was expected to be a mere tuneup for No. 4-ranked St. John's turned into a general breakdown tonight as the Redmen were upset by Niagara, 62-59. It was the first loss in six games this season for the Redmen. Niagara swarmed all over the Redmen on defense and wore them down on offense, shooting 53 percent from the floor. Playing before more than 6,000 fans who rooted as if the national championship were on the line, the Redmen found themselves outshot and outmaneuvered by the inspired Purple Knights in the game at Niagara Falls Convention Center. St, John's scored only 2 points in the last 7 minutes 15 seconds after taking a 57-54 lead.

Chelsea's growing chic has put a premium on brownstones in the neighborhood just above Greenwich Village. What is surely one of the last unrenovated Chelsea brownstones not in the hands of professional developers, a four-story building at 152 West 15th Street, is now undergoing a transformation.

The escape of poison gas from a chemical plant in India on Dec. 3 has raised broad ethical, legal, social and technical questions for multinational corporations. The questions concern not just chemical companies like the Union Carbide Corporation, which owns a majority interest in the plant at Bhopal, where at least 2,000 people died, but all companies that do business in developing nations, those that produce toxic materials anywhere and the governments that permit such production. A Widening Debate These issues, often confined to disputes among ecologists, politicians and corporate officials, are suddenly being debated throughout the world. Demands are being made for basic changes in the way hazardous substances are produced, stored, shipped, regulated and explained to the public. There is growing sentiment that some materials should not be produced in certain countries and that all multinational corporations should give greater emphasis to cultural differences that might increase the risks associated with products assumed to be safe.

When Alfred T. White, the Brooklyn philanthropist, built the Riverside Buildings in the late 1880's, he aimed to show that comfortable, well- designed housing could be built for the working poor as a profit-making venture.

The trees of Central Park were alternating shades of maize and red, and the stream of yellow taxis along Fifth Avenue blended into the autumn palette. Mark Rydell stood at the window of his 24th-floor hotel suite and smiled at the bold landscape, fraught with contrasts - of golds and grays, of nature and construction, of people and machines. The people moving across town looked different from the farmers he had come to know last year, when he directed the filming of ''The River,'' which opens Wednesday at the Beekman Theater. The steel facades they work within, and hide behind, seemed so distant from the weathered homes, and faces, of the Tennessee Valley. ''It's hard sometimes to believe it when you compare them superficially, but the essential elements of life and family and work are really common to both environments,'' said Mr. Rydell. ''The issues transcend the tapestry. They are basic, fundamental, primitive.'' ''The River,'' starring Mel Gibson and Sissy Spacek, is the story of the Garveys - a young family determined to save their farm and rural heritage in the face of a flood, technical progress and economic pressure.

-age girls in twos, threes and sometimes tens are swarming like bees to sweet honey to places like Great Neck, Woodbury, Cedarhurst, Merrick and other pockets throughout the Island where ''name'' clothing shops abound. Many go just to browse or to be seen; others to fill in their wardrobes with one or two items and bring their mothers back for the big buys. But some as young as 8 years old, store owners say, drop a few hundred dollars on casual clothes without batting an eye and then head back shortly for another round. As their clothes testify, knowing what's in style counts - either to ride with the times, or, less commonly, to buck them. Word spreads from North to South Shore or vice versa, often through camp friends, and the so-called status stores cater to their every whim by lining their racks with sweatshirts and T-shirts bearing logos and neon slogans, Benetton shirts, plastic coil chains to string across tops, rhinestone and rubber jewelry, DeGuy jeans, cotton roll-down socks, studded belts and man-size sweaters. David York, owner of Shurries in Woodbury Common in Woodbury, sat behind the counter and watched teen-agers stream through the doors on a recent Saturday afternoon. Courting a clientele from 10 years old on up to women in their 30's and 40's is not easy for a shopkeeper, he said, adding that dealing with a young crowd can be trying at times.

TRENTON THE Offices on Aging in the state's 21 counties would act as matchmakers under the provisions of a bill awaiting Governor Kean's signature. But instead of playing Cupid for prospective husbands and wives, the agencies would pair elderly people who wanted to provide child care with those who needed someone to watch their children before and after school. ''I thought this was a good way of bringing together the young and the old, because in our society many people no longer live near their parents and their children don't get to know their grandparents,'' said State Senator Catherine A. Costa, chairman of the Senate Committee on Aging and sponsor of the bill. Senator Costa, a Democrat, represents the Seventh District, which embraces Burlington County and Pennsauken in Camden County.