What was going on when I was born?

The Giants won their third straight preseason game tonight, an inelegant 10-2 victory over the Green Bay Packers. There were pluses and minuses on both sides of the ball for the Giants. Phil Simms returned at quarterback and looked good, but the running game sputtered with only 86 yards in 38 carries. The defensive line, especially George Martin, and the linebackers played well, but the secondary gave up many receptions by the Packers' swift receivers.

UNPLANNED events sometimes have a way of intruding on Presidential vacations. Ronald Reagan and the supporting cast he travels with were at his ranch near here in 1981 when American fighters downed two Soviet-built Libyan warplanes, and again in 1983, when Korean Airlines Flight OO7 was shot down by Russian pilots. Last week there was an unusually brisk flurry by the President's aides, but there was nothing unplanned about it. Many Congressional Democrats who were spending their off-duty August well to the east of the Santa Ynez Mountains, and a few members of the President's Republican Party as well, professed to not quite know what to make of the unexpected intrusions into their vacations.

President Reagan's proposal to eliminate the deduction for state and local taxes in calculating personal income taxes would lead to major changes in the financing of public schools, according to economists and educators. Whether the change would be good or bad for the schools is a topic of vigorous debate. The deductibility proposal, a key element of the Reagan Administration's broad plan of tax revision, would cost taxpayers who itemize deductions a total of $39 billion a year by 1990, according to Treasury Department estimates, although the overall lowering of tax rates would make up for some of that. Allowing people to deduct from taxable income the amount they pay in state and local taxes is widely regarded as an indirect Federal subsidy to public education that the American Federation of Teachers estimates at $16.5 billion a year. Critics say eliminating deductibility would encourage local tax revolts around the country and, as a result, force school districts to cut their budgets by as much as 20 percent when they are losing Federal funds. The effects of the change would be felt most harshly, they say, in districts that have tried hardest to aid disadvantaged students.

The Federal Government is preparing to abolish building standards that have served for half a century as the basic guide for the nation's housing industry. The Minimum Property Standards of the Federal Housing Administration are to be replaced by state and local codes as part of the Administration's drive to reduce Federal regulations and transfer authority to the states. Officials of the Department of Housing and Urban Development said they expected the change to take effect by the end of this year. The proposal has aroused confusion and controversy. Advocates of the change say the Federal standards are an unnecessary burden blocking creative solutions to housing problems. But opponents say the lack of some Federal control could lead to low-quality construction. Papier-Mache Bathtubs? Al Louis Ripskis, who works for H.U.D. and publishes a newsletter often critical of the department, said, for example, that papier-mache bathtubs, or no bathtubs at all, would be permitted in some areas.

THE chemical industry suddenly seemed a lot more risky last week. The toxic gas leak at a Union Carbide plant in Institute, W.Va., sending 135 people to the hospital, was by no means the most serious American chemical accident. But among the public and regulators, it clearly produced the most alarm in recent memory. Something had changed dramatically, both the industry and its critics agreed. The long shadow of Bhopal, where 2,000 people died last December from a toxic leak at a Carbide plant in India, had made many more Americans sensitive to chemical accidents. Even small leaks were prompting mayoral press conferences in Charleston, W.Va. and news stories nationally.

Chief's Crown, the forgotten 2-year-old champion of last year and the beaten favorite in all of the Triple Crown races this spring, redeemed himself and began a bid to reclaim the leadership of the nation's 3-year-olds with a decisive 2 1/4-length victory in the $293,000 Travers Stakes today at Saratoga. The small son of Danzig and Six Crown was fourth down the backstretch behind a slow pace, then swung wide on the far turn and mowed down the leaders through the stretch under strong urging. Turkoman, a chronic stretch-runner who surprisingly fell onto the lead today, held on for second, three lengths in front of Skip Trial, with Stephan's Odyssey a disappointing fourth. Uptown Swell, Broadway Tommy and Don's Choice completed the order of finish.

Who was the greatest, the most frequently performed and the most successful dramatist never to have written very much, well or successfully for the stage? Think of the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of ''Nicholas Nickleby,'' think of Lionel Bart's musical ''Oliver!'', think of adaptation after adaptation of novel after novel, and the answer to the conundrum is obvious: Charles Dickens. And if Cleo Laine, George Rose, Betty Buckley and the other members of Wilford Leach's cast have their way, the point will be proved again in Central Park Wednesday. That's when the New York Shakespeare Festival presents a musical play derived from the wonderful novel Dickens left tantalizingly incomplete at his death, ''The Mystery of Edwin Drood.'' Critics have often commented on the theatricality of Dickens's writing - those exuberantly conceived characters, those vivid tableaux and bravura set-pieces, the sheer showmanship of the prose style - and his biographers have sometimes sought explanations for it in his temperament and tastes.

ARTHRITIS entered Ann DeGrout's life when she was 28. She was walking down the stairs of her home one day when her knees inexplicably gave out. She felt a stinging pain. The symptoms worsened and it became clear that she had rheumatoid arthritis. Thirty years later, the disease is still with her. Arthritis has been an expensive companion. Mrs. DeGrout, a prim woman with quick eyes who lives in Clifton, N.J., buys about $200 worth of medication a year. She swallows eight to ten tablets a day of Ecotrin, a coated aspirin. Each morning, she takes 5 milligrams of Prednisone, a steroid that must be prescribed by a doctor. At least once a month, she must see her physician, which typically costs her $20 to $50. Lately, she has been showing up weekly. She has found it necessary to acquire a range of equipment to help her through the routines of daily life. She has a padded bathtub seat that cost her about $130. She spent $35 for a walker, $25 for a set of canes. She owns a reacher ($15) that she uses to scoop up things.

IN Connecticut and across the country, the face of poverty is becoming the face of a child. There are more poor children in America today - nearly 14 million - than since before the Great Society programs of the 1960's, a recent Congressional Budget Office report concluded. More than 2 of every 10 children live in poverty. The poverty line for a family of three is $8,850 a year. Two-thirds of the children living below it are white, but black children are three times more likely to be poor than whites. Most are the children of single mothers. They live in the cities and in the countryside.

MEDICAL technology that can measure minute amounts of chemicals in the body has raised disturbing questions on Long Island about whether teachers should be subjected to tests for illicit drug use as a condition for employment or job advancement. The issue was brought into focus in the Patchogue-Medford School District in eastern Suffolk County, where a teachers' union won a court decision in June that said school administrators' plans to require such tests for 23 teachers seeking tenure were illegal. Despite that decision, the administrators have gone ahead with plans to require drug testing for prospective teachers and other new employees. It is believed to be the first time that a Long Island school system has made drug testing a requirement for employment. Such testing is believed to be increasing across the country, both in private industry and among public workers, leading to concern by civil liberties groups and others. Richard Emery, counsel for the New York Civil Liberties Union, confirmed that the practice was on the rise in the New York area. For example, the school board in East Rutherford, N.J., plans to require that students take urine tests to check for drug use.

FACED with rising costs of renting an apartment or owning a home, elderly people, especially those with fixed incomes, are turning to an alternative - home-sharing, or matched living. Not only does this offer a way to keep a roof over their heads without moving into an institution, but it also provides for another basic human need: companionship. Fourteen programs designed to match those seeking homes with those offering them are now operated by social-service agencies in the state, with a 15th about to get under way. Most, to meet the criteria for funds under the Federal Older Americans Act, require that one of the parties in a home-sharing arrangement be elderly, but some are intergenerational.

IT is becoming a familiar sight along Connecticut highways - a business executive with the steering wheel in one hand and a cellular mobile telephone in the other, dealing, as an ad has put it, while he is wheeling. With the addition in June of Cellsites in Fairfield County, business executives - as well as real estate agents, salesmen, lawyers, doctors, bankers, builders and a host of other people who want to make use of their time while they are on the road - are able to place and receive calls as they travel across the state. The service began in Hartford at the end of January, when Southern New England Telephone received permission from the Federal Communications Commission to begin operating Connecticut's first cellular mobile phone system and six cell sites were constructed in the greater Hartford area. In March, six more cell sites were added in the greater New Haven area; in June, five cell sites were completed in Fairfield County.