Making first post show full content?

I know there have been posts on this. I am new to wordpress. In playing around, I see that short posts show full content and long posts just say “Read the rest of this entry”. I want to have the option to diaply full content (especially for 1st post). Most forum posts on this topic suggest use of loopcounter. I would rather address the problem right where the logis ic occuring. So I see that my posts are being replaced with the “Read the rest of this entry” text here:

function get_the_content($more_link_text = '(more...)', $stripteaser = 0, $more_file = '') {
	global $id, $post, $more, $single, $withcomments, $page, $pages, $multipage, $numpages;
	global $preview;
	global $pagenow;
	$output = '';

	if ( !empty($post->post_password) ) { // if there's a password
		if ( stripslashes($_COOKIE['wp-postpass_'.COOKIEHASH]) != $post->post_password ) {	// and it doesn't match the cookie
			$output = get_the_password_form();
			return $output;
		}
	}

	if ( $more_file != '' )
		$file = $more_file;
	else
		$file = $pagenow; //$_SERVER['PHP_SELF'];

	if ( $page > count($pages) ) // if the requested page doesn't exist
		$page = count($pages); // give them the highest numbered page that DOES exist

	$content = $pages[$page-1];
	if ( preg_match('/<!--more(.*?)?-->/', $content, $matches) ) {
		$content = explode($matches[0], $content, 2);
		if ( !empty($matches[1]) && !empty($more_link_text) )
			$more_link_text = strip_tags(wp_kses_no_null(trim($matches[1])));
	} else {
		$content = array($content);
	}
	if ( (false !== strpos($post->post_content, '<!--noteaser-->') && ((!$multipage) || ($page==1))) )
		$stripteaser = 1;
	$teaser = $content[0];
	if ( ($more) && ($stripteaser) )
		$teaser = '';
	$output .= $teaser;
	if ( count($content) > 1 ) {
		if ( $more ) {
			$output .= '<span id="more-'.$id.'"></span>'.$content[1];
		} else {
			$output = balanceTags($output);
			if ( ! empty($more_link_text) )
				$output .= ' <a href="'. get_permalink() . "#more-$id\" class=\"more-link\">$more_link_text</a>";
		}

	}
	if ( $preview ) // preview fix for javascript bug with foreign languages
		$output =	preg_replace('/\%u([0-9A-F]{4,4})/e',	"'&#'.base_convert('\\1',16,10).';'", $output);

	return $output;
}

Just don’t see how this code checks the size of the post. Anyway, could really use some help.

thanks,

brian