What was going on when I was born?

SHIITE Moslem forces last week advanced in their drive to win control of West Beirut and southern Lebanon, where they are the largest ethnic group. The Shiite successes dealt new blows to the virtually powerless Government of President Amin Gemayel, a Maronite Christian. Mr. Gemayel, who narrowly escaped injury when the Presidential Palace was shelled by unspecified enemies (there were several possibilities, including dissident Christians), flew to Damascus seeking help. He hinted that President Hafez al-Assad would dispatch troops to Beirut to back up the Lebanese Army in restoring order, an assignment the Syrians relinquished during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon three years ago.

A UNION contract giving female clerical employees special raises to reduce pay disparities between their jobs and those held mainly by men was recently adopted by the town of Cortlandt. About 25 clerks, typists and stenographers are to receive salary adjustments this year of $30 to $3,000. The raises, totaling $36,000, are in addition to a 6 percent pay increase this year for about 150 town employees covered by the contract. The two-year contract expires at the end of next year.

THE waiting room is filled with the normal mixture of maladies. Diabetes. Chest pain. Lung disease. Distraction is found in magazines, or in watching the freckle-faced woman try to keep her children from rearranging the furniture. A tiny, stoop-shouldered lady arrives, and hands the receptionist a plastic bag. ''Dahlia seeds,'' she says. ''For the doctors' gardens.''

The Mets defeated the Padres tonight when they rallied in the late innings for a 5-3 victory that kept them in first place in the National League's East. The Mets, who had lost their first three games against the Padres this season, came close to losing this one at the start. Ron Darling walked four of the first seven batters he faced and fell two runs behind in three innings. But he got stricter as the game got longer, and the Mets came back with three runs in the sixth, another in the seventh and one more in the ninth.

MANY suburban communities developed so haphazardly that some of the streets are private, neither serviced nor maintained by the municipality. Sometimes the street evolved from long driveways of former estates along which new owners were given rights of way as they bought their lots. This is the case, for example, of the 20 houses along a network of private roads inside the former Dana estate in Old Mastic, L.I. In parts of Fairfield County, Conn., developers found that they could avoid the expense of conforming with municipal regulations by turning old farm paths and narrow Indian trails into private roads. And of course, there was also a certain cachet and rustic appeal in having one's property tucked away along a private lane.

Tonight the Broadway theater community will put on black tie and happy faces for its annual spring rite of revelry, the nationally broadcast Tony Awards show. But however much merriment is staged for the benefit of the television cameras, the gaiety is likely to be as forced as that of the cafe-society party scenes in Hollywood movies made during the Depression. While the American theater in general may be entering an artistic boom period - and while the 1984-85 Broadway season offered more than a few artistic triumphs - the street has been unable to halt its galloping case of economic blues. Even as some members of the commercial theater establishment pledged their hearts and purses to worthy theatrical endeavors, they had to face the fact that, for much of the season, the only ''new'' Broadway show to cause a public stampede was Yul Brynner in ''The King and I.''

Women from 19 countries and 40 states tested their running power in the heat at Central Park yesterday morning in the 14th annual L'eggs Mini Marathon. Khristen Slesar, the youngest at 5, and Lois Schieffelin, the oldest at 74, both of New York City, were joined by 7,807 other women in the strongest field ever assembled for a race that started in 1972 with 78 entrants. The heat (yesterday's high was 80) proved bothersome to all the top contenders, but suited Francie Larrieu-Smith of Denton, Tex., who captured the race in 32 minutes 23 seconds, three seconds ahead of Grete Waitz, the brilliant Norwegian runner, who had won the race of 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) five of the previous six years. 'Ideal for Me' ''The weather conditions turned out to be ideal for me, because I have been training in Texas in very hot weather,'' said the 32-year-old Mrs. Smith, who has competed indoors at Madison Square Garden for years, but ran outdoors in New York City for the first time.

Like a dozen other idle factories here, the Westinghouse picture-tube plant is an industrial dinosaur. Closed for nine years because of Japanese competition, it sits next to the highway in an area of lost jobs, broken families and fading hope. Perhaps no other small city in the Northeast provides a more vivid example of how American manufacturing has declined. So the recent announcement that the tube plant will reopen has been the best news in years for Elmira. And the decision to retool, reorganize and restaff the plant under Japanese management is a twist that most of this city's 50,000 residents are happy to accept.

President Reagan has concluded that the Soviet Union has hardened its positions on arms control, and he has told American negotiators in Geneva not to show flexibility unless the Russians make new proposals first, according to Administration officials. Soviet diplomats here, asserting that the Reagan Administration has stiffened its stance, have broadly hinted that the Russians will set forth new or at least more specific proposals at the arms talks. Thus the general expectation among foreign diplomats and Administration officials is that the new session of talks, which began Thursday, will produce more activity than the previous round, which both sides recently characterized as fruitless. But although diplomats on both sides have formed an impression in recent weeks of the possible lines of compromise, none, they say, portend a breakthrough. Basic Positions Unchanged By all accounts, neither side has decided to alter basic positions. ''We haven't,'' a senior State Department official said, ''and there is no sign that any likely Soviet proposal will be attractive enough to push us off our dime.''

IN THE next few months, legislators and Governor Kean must decide whether state pension or annunity investments should be withdrawn from institutions or companies that do business in or with South Africa. A bill calling for such divestiture within two years was passed by the Assembly May 13 and is now in committee in the Senate. The bill's chief sponsor, Assemblyman Willie B. Brown, Democrat of the 29th District (part of Essex County), contends that enough pressure would make companies withdraw from South Africa rather than risk further divestitures and that this would force the South African Government to dismantle its apartheid structure - which maintains strict racial segregation - or accept the economic loss. Opponents of the bill argue that, since American investment accounts for only 1 to 2 percent of capital investment and employment in South Africa, a withdrawal of United States corporations would hurt only the blacks there.

New York's flower wholesalers are among the most recent of the groups of tradesmen to be nudged from their traditional territory in Manhattan by rising rents and the demand for midtown office space. But by next spring, construction is expected to be completed on the College Point Flower Market, a new facility to house up to eight wholesalers now situated in the Flower District, in the vicinity of 28th Street and the Avenue of the Americas.

Linda Quay's 2-year-old daughter was sitting in her highchair in the dining room when the tornado swirled up out of nowhere Friday evening. ''It took the front of the house and it took the back of the house,'' Mrs. Quay said today. ''After the glass stopped flying around, I crawled over to her. She wasn't hurt, and she wasn't even crying.'' But many of their neighbors' homes were destroyed, and at least 12 people were killed in this small town in the farm country between Cleveland and Erie, Pa.