What was going on when I was born?

BOSTON Perhaps they can be compared to ma^itre d'hotels, assisting their teammates in the Boston Celtics' front court to the tables reserved under the basket. ''Here, on the baseline, Mr. Maxwell. Have a seat. Do you wish to see the wine list, Mr. Bird?'' When the Celtics have forwards the caliber of Larry Bird, Cedric Maxwell and Kevin McHale, and a center as good as Robert Parrish, then it is only natural for the backcourt to cater to their wishes. Dennis Johnson said he doesn't mind playing what is usually a subservient role, serving backdoor burgers for Bird and the others. It is the nature of a game dominated by big men, he said. Johnson said that he and Danny Ainge, and the cast of backcourt reserves are actually an ideal complement to the forwards.

''It will probably be a tie between our riders and the Park Avenue traffic on which is most inconvenienced.'' - William Aston, a vice president of Metro-North. (A1:6.)

A dispatch by the Associated Press on November 25 about competition for a Navy base to be situated on theGulf Coast misstated the number of cities competing and listed several incorrectly. Nineteen cities are under consideration, including Lake Charles, La., and Gulfport, Miss., Baton Rouge, La., is not under consideration.

The United States is close to agreement with steel-exporting nations on a system of quotas to curb their shipments here to less than 20 percent of the market. The arrangements have been painstakingly negotiated over the last three months under a Presidential steel plan announced Sept. 18 - a plan undertaken to quell election year pressures from the domestic industry and to deflect moves in Congress for even tighter controls. ''We are making considerable progress with a number of countries on steel,'' said David F. Demarest, spokesman for the United States Trade Representative, Bill Brock, who has managed the negotiations with a dozen countries and the 10-nation European Common Market. Deadline Nears The President set a Dec. 18 deadline to reach agreements that would limit finished steel imports to 18 1/2 percent of the market. So far this year, imports have averaged 26 percent of consumption.

The sweeping economic changes set in motion by China's leadership over the last six years have produced an almost total reinterpretation of the nation's official Communist ideology. While Soviet-style Marxism has become mired down, the Chinese are evolving a more flexible system. They have peeled away - some would say repudiated - familiar Marxist tenets that retarded the nation's ability to modernize itself. The leadership of Deng Xiaoping has scrapped the personality cult of Mao Zedong and has muted the old call for class struggle. Peking no longer talks of exporting revolution, but of importing Western technology and management techniques.

States across the country are limiting the coverage of hospital care for poor people under Medicaid in an effort to control the costs of the program. In Mississippi, for example, Medicaid will not pay for more than 15 days a year of hospital care for a beneficiary. The limit was cut to that level from 20 days in February, the second reduction in two years. ''It all revolves around money,'' said Billy F. Simmons, director of the Medicaid program in Mississippi. ''The state's been broke. It does not have any more money to put into the Medicaid program, so we have to make the money go further.''

The train tunnels under Park Avenue - some more than 110 years old - are rotting, and long stretches of the avenue will have to be ripped up to fix them, rail officials say. Engineers have not determined how much of the avenue north of 42d Street will have to be torn open or for how long, according to officials of the Metro-North Commuter Railroad, which runs hundreds of trains through the tunnels every day. But, they said, the repairs would affect both automobile traffic on the avenue and the train traffic beneath it. Metro-North officials said they would try to take only one of the four main tracks out of service at any given time to avoid major disruptions.

The Federal Reserve's senior policy-making body meets this week to set money- supply targets for the next eight weeks against a backdrop of renewed prodding by the Reagan Administration to drive interest rates down. The Fed's Open Market Committee has eased its grip on the nation's money supply since last summer and interest rates have come down significantly, but only last week Treasury Secretary Donald T. Regan said the Fed had not done enough. Mr. Regan's comments, which included a suggestion for bringing the Federal Reserve under Administration control, came before Thursday's report that the M-1 measure of the money supply fell a whopping $7.1 billion in the week ended Dec. 3. Pressure Put on Volcker Paul A. Volcker, chairman of the Federal Reserve Board and an object of Mr. Regan's criticism more than once in the last four years, has acknowledged in recent weeks that inflation was a diminished problem. He is being pushed from all sides to loosen the money supply further.

IT is 30 minutes and counting, and Michael Hollingsworth is briefing his troops. ''No noshing,'' he says. ''No frivolities. Howard, you do desserts again, and James, you're the hot dog person. And know where the food is coming from.'' While Mr. Hollingsworth is referring to the kitchen's location, the food for the event - a Christmas party being thrown by Reader's Digest for the agencies and companies that advertise in it - is literally coming from his employer, Mark Fahrer Caterers. Starting last week and culminating in a frenzy of Christmas party-giving this week, New York businesses are using caterers such as Mark Fahrer to regale their employees and clients at their own offices and in clubs, private halls and lofts - or, as Mr. Fahrer sums it up, ''you ring, we bring.''

Sweden grabbed an unexpected 2-0 lead over the United States in the 1984 Davis Cup tennis final today as Mats Wilander crushed Jimmy Connors and Henrik Sundstrom followed with a straight-set upset of John McEnroe, the world's top-ranked player. Sundstrom's convincing, 13-11, 6-4, 6-3 victory in his first meeting ever with McEnroe was only the third time that the American left-hander had been beaten this year. The loss was also his first ever in a cup final. Sweden needs one more victory to capture the three-of-five-match final, with the doubles scheduled Monday.

Five years after its troops swept into Afghanistan, the Soviet Union is fighting a ferocious and largely secret war to subdue a fiercely resistant population. High-altitude saturation bombing has demolished many villages in several regions of the country. Many thousands of Afghan civilians have been killed and millions have fled their homes in search of peace. And still, nearly every day, Soviet fighter bombers and helicopter gunships streak across the Afghan sky, looking for the guerrilla warriors who dominate the country's mountains and deserts. A Grim Picture Because the Soviet-dominated Afghan Government almost never lets Western journalists into the country, a detailed and definitive description of what is going on there remains impossible. But two weeks of investigation, including dozens of interviews along the Afghan-Pakistani border and elsewhere, produce at least the outlines of a grim and brutal picture.

This is the story of Judy, a homeless woman who sits at the corner of 64th Street and Lexington Avenue. By day she rests on a black plastic garbage bag placed neatly on the sidewalk, smiling at passers-by who stop and hand her a dollar or two and thanking them warmly in a pleasant, husky voice. Many of them live in the neighborhood of expensive town houses and antique stores and have come to feel protective toward her. At night she gathers her belongings - a large padlocked box on a suitcase cart, a red-and-gray striped carry bag and a black Lancome tote bag - and lugs them three blocks to Second Avenue and 63d Street. There she puts them carefully in the doorway of a bank, walks to the curb and begins to scream obscenities into the night.