What was going on when I was born?

As the Phillips Petroleum Company sweetened its offer to shareholders in an effort to keep the company independent, the local Chamber of Commerce was working on a sweetener of its own. About a dozen members met last week to consider ways to help Phillips win stockholder support at a meeting scheduled for Feb. 22.

Today marks the debut of the animals of Wuzzles, the ''plush people'' of Hugga Bunch, the warring forces of M.A.S.K., the women of the Princess of Power and the ''insectoids'' of Sectaurs. Each is a major toy line being introduced at the opening of the American International Toy Fair here. More important, all are hot character licensing properties.

Julius Erving electrified the crowd with a cradle dunk. Earvin (Magic) Johnson made a seemingly impossible pass and George Gervin hit a 15-foot jumper from the hip. There were 21 other players looking for playing time and making moves usually reserved for the playgrounds, moves that some coaches might frown on in a game that counted. And in the end, the West beat the East, 140-129, in the 35th annual All-Star Game today. It was the West's first victory after five consecutive losses, and it came before the largest N.B.A. crowd ever, 43,146, at the Hoosier Dome. Ralph Sampson of the Houston Rockets was crowned the star of stars. He scored 24 points, grabbed 10 rebounds and was named the game's most valuable player.

The Bank of Boston plans to issue its first major statement Monday explaining in detail why it failed to report $1.22 billion in international cash transfers, mostly with Swiss banks, a spokesman for the bank said today. At the same time, the spokesman, Barry Allen, said that a Federal investigation of the bank had begun as early as May 1983 and had originally focused on the bank's domestic cash transfers. The inquiry by the United States Attorney's office here shifted to the Bank of Boston's foreign operations only last June, Mr. Allen said.

The controversy over the violence that broke out last Friday when the exiled opposition leader Kim Dae Jung returned home took a new turn today. The United States Ambassador to South Korea charged that some members of a group of prominent Americans had deliberately provoked the violence. The accusation was rejected as ''absolutely false'' by the Americans.

Alan Eagleson, the executive director of the National Hockey League's player association, said today that he is prepared to advise the league's players to strike if certain demands are not met when the association's current collective bargaining agreement expires as early as September 1986. ''If the owners don't respond then there is a definite possibility of a strike,'' said Eagleson. ''Profits are up and the players should get some of it. A strike may not have been an alternative a few years ago because it would have caused bankruptcies, but that's not the case anymore.''

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 1985

She is about 34 years old and single, most likely a college graduate, and she earns between $30,000 and $35,000 a year. This is the customer who is the primary target of the General Motors Corporation's Chevrolet division as it prepares to bring the Nova, the product of its joint venture with the Toyota Motor Corporation, to market this summer. Research shows that 57 percent of all auto buyers are female.

Just about the only people in town who do not think that the Mets must win in 1985 are the Mets. They are not exactly copping a plea. Most of them expect to win, and all of them expect to come close. Frank Cashen, the general manager, even concedes that ''New York is a 'now' town where you've got to win now.'' But he doesn't buy the common wisdom that the Mets have got to win, or else. He says they have already taken the biggest jump, ''from also-rans to respectable.'' Keith Hernandez says they have shown ''the will to win.'' Rusty Staub says they have created ''excitement, but not pressure.''

American colleges and universities have allowed their curriculums to slip into a state of ''disarray'' and ''incoherence,'' putting in question the quality of what the country's college students learn, a major higher education organization charged yesterday. In a 47-page report called ''Integrity in the College Curriculum,'' the Association of American Colleges said that while the institutions seemed confident that a college education should take four years, they were less sure about ''its content and purpose.''

The fate of one of the Air Force's most cherished weapons, the manned strategic bomber, has reached a pivotal point: Congress must decide this year whether to extend production of the B-1 bomber or forge ahead with a radically new design dubbed the Stealth bomber. The choice involves some of the nation's most tightly guarded military secrets, namely how to build aircraft that can evade Soviet radar. Pitted against this technology's promise is perhaps the most tenacious political network in Pentagon history, one that enabled the B-1 program to survive a decade of controversy, including cancellation by President Carter in 1977.

SARASOTA, Fla. He was in his crib, lying on his left side, a white blanket over him. In the silence of his coma, the sound every so often of the 19-month-old boy's soft, deep breath seemed to be almost as loud as that of his father's fastball thudding into a catcher's mitt. John Robert Candelaria Jr. fell into the screened-in swimming pool attached to the spacious brown home here on Christmas morning. After being hospitalized for five weeks in intensive care, he recently returned home with round-the-clock nursing care.