What was going on when I was born?

The number of confirmed cases of Lyme disease - a tick-borne infection that can cause recurring arthritis - set a record last year in New York State, according to health officials. Authorities said 434 cases have been confirmed by laboratory tests for 1984 in New York State, primarily in the New York City suburbs of Westchester and Putnam Counties and Long Island. In 1983, the state reported 168 cases. Dr. Jorge Benach, a scientist with the State Health Department and an assistant professor of pathology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, called it ''a suburban disease'' and said Westchester had experienced ''an unprecedented explosion of cases'' in 1984.

Two schoolteachers, four drug addicts, a retired opera singer, a college student, a butcher, a former police officer, three housekeepers, a homeless alcoholic, a wealthy executive, three dressmakers, a retired longshoreman, a convicted thief and 123 other patients died in one month at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center. Some of these men and women died without warning. But nearly half spent weeks knowing that death was imminent. And some died only after doctors, nurses, hospital attorneys and families - ill equipped to deal with the agonizing ethical issues - found themselves having to choreograph the precise time and manner for life to end. Years ago death was a statement of fact; today it has become a dilemma of agonizing choices. That is true not just in a few well-publicized cases, but also for ordinary people in ordinary circumstances.

Forty years ago, a small girl named Kay Kaufman accompanied her mother to the Dohany Synagogue in the Budapest ghetto, bringing food to fellow Jews who were interned there by the Nazis. Behind the synagogue, in what had been a flower-filled courtyard, the bodies of Jews who had starved to death or been executed lay in heaps, their burial prohibited by the Nazis. ''I remember the colored stones in the courtyard,'' said Miss Kaufman, a 49- year-old writer who now lives in Forest Hills, Queens, ''and I remember the bodies lined up like logs.'' Hungarian Government Offer These grim memories, and happier ones of bar mitzvahs and weddings, were revived yesterday as 150 Hungarian Jews gathered in Manhattan to begin a fund-raising drive for the restoration of synagogues and cemeteries in their native country. An offer of matching funds has been made by the Hungarian Government, which was represented at yesterday's ceremony by its Ambassador to the United States, Vencel Hazi.

MONDAY, JANUARY 14, 1985 International The Soviet Foreign Minister said Soviet-American negotiations on nuclear missiles would be impossible if they were separated from talks on space weapons. In a Soviet television interview that followed his meeting in Geneva last week with Secretary of State George P. Shultz, Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko rejected any effort by Washington to shift emphasis in future negotiations from outer space to strategic and medium- range missiles. (Page A1, Column 6.) Brazil's return to full democracy will take a big step tomorrow when the Electoral College chooses the country's first civilian President since the army seized power in 1964. (A1:5.)

Outside, it was raining hard. In the locker room, Don Shula glanced at Dan Marino, then a rookie, and pointed to a few plays listed on the Miami Dolphins' game plan that 1983 day in Baltimore. ''We won't use these plays now,'' the coach said. ''How come?'' the rookie quarterback asked. ''It's raining too hard,'' the coach replied.

Computer science, a field in which there was no major at most colleges and universities before the 1970's, is fast becoming one of the most popular majors as enrollments grow so rapidly that some schools must limit admissions. The situation is epitomized in Boston, where Northeastern University created a College of Computer Science in 1982 with 230 students that now has an enrollment of 909. At the nearby Massachusetts Institute of Technology, one-third of all undergraduates with declared majors have chosen the department of electrical engineering and computer science. Computer science, with its lure of plentiful jobs and the possibility of youthful entrepreneurship, is accounting for an ever larger portion of the enrollment at a time that overall enrollment is no longer growing. ''These are young people who have been brought up on video games, and there is a romance in computers for them,'' said Paul M. Kalaghan, dean of the College of Computer Science at Northeastern. ''It is a chance to spend your life working with devices smarter than you are and, yet, have control over them. It's like carrying a six-gun on the old frontier.''

MONDAY, JANUARY 14, 1985 Companies Norfolk Southern is expected to be chosen by the Transportation Department as the buyer of Conrail, sources in the railroad industry, investment community and Government say. Congress, which must approve the sale, is expected to be told soon of the department's choice. Norfolk bid about $1.2 billion for the Government's 85 percent interest in the carrier. Similar bids were made by Alleghany and J. Willard Marriott Jr. (Page D1.)

The New York Stock Exchange confirmed reports yesterday that it had been holding discussions with the Pacific Stock Exchange about ''a possible joint venture that could include a merger of the two stock markets.'' ''Our discussions with the Pacific Stock Exchange have been quite serious,'' said Richard Torrenzano, a vice president and spokesman for the giant New York exchange. ''But no agreement has yet been reached other than to continue the discussions.''

The transit police are experimenting with an unusual tactic against passengers who smoke, drink alcoholic beverages, carry blaring radios or commit other quality-of-life offenses on the subway: They are ejecting them. Instead of issuing summonses to offenders and allowing them to continue on their route, the transit police are escorting them to the street and warning them not to return to the subway system at that station. The police estimate that, since last spring, when the program was begun without fanfare, 3,800 passengers have been ejected. The program is being tested at selected stations where violations have been most obvious.

Many people here think of this as a General Motors town. The General Motors Corporation's 10 big manufacturing plants dominate the industrial landscape, and G.M.'s employment levels - now more than 20,000 workers, or one out of five manufacturing jobs - are closely monitored as a gauge of the local economy. But a number of business and academic people here are beginning to conclude that military spending may really be what makes Dayton tick. Many are counting on the military presence to provide a crucial advantage in transforming Dayton into a high-technology center. That sort of revival is badly needed to offset substantial job losses in Dayton's traditional industries. In recent years, factory jobs at such employers as G.M., the NCR Corporation and the Chrysler Corporation have fallen by more than 25,000.

In a kiss-and- tell book about life in the executive suite at the General Motors Corporation, John DeLorean complained about the burden that paperwork imposed on top G.M. managers when he was a vice president there. Before an executive went to a meeting, he was expected to read the advance text of every presentation to be given, Mr. DeLorean recalled. ''There were literally 600 to 700 pages a day to be read and processed,'' he marvelled in the book, ''On a Clear Day You Can See General Motors,'' published some years ago. Last week, General Motors formed a new company to make the Saturn, its first new brand-name since World War I, and one of the ideas is to make cars without that blizzard of paper. ''They're going to have their own business systems,'' said Roger B. Smith, General Motors' chairman, and the enthusiastic patron of the new subsidiary. ''We want the minimum amount of paperwork. We've given them an 8 1/2-by-11 sheet of paper and told them to get everything they can on that, and throw the rest away.''

The Soviet Foreign Minister, Andrei A. Gromyko, declared today that Soviet-American negotiations on nuclear missiles would be impossible if they were separated from talks on space weapons. In an unusual television appearance to discuss his meeting in Geneva last week with Secretary of State George P. Shultz, Mr. Gromyko rejected any effort by Washington to shift the emphasis in future negotiations from outer space to strategic and medium-range missiles. Overall Accord Stressed ''Without reaching an accord, simultaneous and interrelated in all three directions, there can be no advancement in the realization of what was agreed upon in Geneva,'' Mr. Gromyko said. ''One would like that fewer frivolous statements of this kind come from the United States of America.'' Mr. Gromyko also assailed Washington's proposal to continue research into a space-based missile defense system, calling it a ''devious and, generally speaking, perfidious strategem.''