AMERICA turns 204 today. All it wants from me is a little token of appreciation, only my name and address and social security number.

I love birthdays, always have. I even like shopping for birthday presents, giving being good for the soul and all that. But this year I'm having some doubts.

When I was a kid, before I understood the importance of appearances and tokenism, I was a hard-headed pragmatist in the best free-enterprise tradition. Gifts were rewards for behavior I approved of; on occasion I would inform my younger brother that if he didn't give me the baseball bat he would get no birthday present. The implication being that Christmas might be equally as barren.

Maybe it's time to return to that practice. Let's trade a little, Mr. Carter. Stop building the MX missile, and start apologizing to Iran. Maybe pass the ERA. And perhaps the Supreme Court, after a brief rereading of the Constitution, might overturn last week's abortion ruling. All I ask is a little progress, and I'll be first in line at the post office.

Funny how the same people who advocate laissez-faire individualism in everything else are the first to demand patriotic conformity to the draft. "Defending your country" is a phrase that gets tossed around quite a bit. Maybe, with a little persuasion, I will. Maybe not. At the very least, I'll send a card. --W.E.M.

AMERICA--in the form of 51 men and 2 women--is being held hostage in Iran. The Defense Department decided that eight helicopters were enough and lost three men in the desert. Congress is spending $56 billion on what one politician has called "mass transit for missiles." And in Miami, Black and white people are fighting each other in the streets for jobs.

America--it's day 244 now--is being held hostage in Iran. Congressmen are taking money from FBI agents dressed as Arab sheiks. FBI agents are taking money from mobsters dressed as shipping magnates. And in suburban Virginia, Vietnamese refugees cannot find homes or jobs.

America--Time magazine, you may recall, named the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini its man of the year--is being held hostage in Iran. The Supreme Court has ruled that the government won't pay for the poor's abortions. Harper's magazine has gone away. And in California, the largest Congressional district in the country may send a member of the Ku Klux Klan to Capitol Hill.

America--Abolhassan Bani-Sadr will be included in the next issue of Who's Who-- is being held hostage in Iran. In Detroit, garbage is piling up in the streets and the Republicans are coming to town. Everybody wants a tax cut. And in Washington, President Carter smiled when he revived registration for the draft.

America--no, Charlie Beckwith did not play Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now-- is being held hostage in Iran. Mt. St. Helens has blown up three times. Sugar Ray Leonard lost--and got $10 million for an hour's work. And in Dallas, people are dropping dead from the heat.

America--Cyrus Vance, you may recall, resigned as Secretary of State--is being held hostage in Iran. In South Korea, they've locked up all the students for being students. At the Pentagon, a broken 46-cent circuit almost started World War III. And in France, they've built their very own neutron bomb.

If they miscalculate when the war starts and hit New York instead of Moscow, analysts believe they'll only kill half the people living on Long Island. But the Statue of Liberty will still be there.   --R.O.B.

I CAN'T HELP WONDERING if this Fourth of July I'll feel that tingle down my spine when I hear the 1812 Overture and see Old Glory blazing in red, white, and blue fireworks against the black night sky. I'm not concerned with America's birthday this year. It may be selfish, but I'm thinking about my birthday and the fact it places me in the first group of 20 year-olds that must register for the draft.

I--and, I suspect, everyone else born in 1960 or 1961--can remember watching the draft lotteries of the late 60s and early 70s--Bingo games of life and death--on television. I always looked at where my birthday fell in the lottery, thankful that no matter how low the number, I would never have to go and hopeful that somehow the same would be true when I reached draft age.

It may be irrational, but visions of draft lotteries have entered my mind again after a long hiatus because the law now requires me and four million men my age to register in just a few weeks. I do not object to a meaningful commitment to one's nation; what bothers me is the blatantly political evolution of this particular method for showing patriotic devotion.