Reading the short story "Missionaries" by Jeremiah Chamberlin (truly a great story, very hard to believe the Author Notes that it was his first nationally published story) in the Winter 2007 issue of Michigan Quarterly Review, the first page alone had me realizing there are different means of offering information to your reader and Chamberlin had used a couple quite well already.

There's the simple idea of what is currently going on given to us by the narrator's thoughts:

"I'm pumping the gas. My brother-in-law, Chris, is washing the windshield."

There's information from the past given, again, through the thoughts of the narrator:

"Chris was born again in high school, though he isn't any more."

There's observation of what others are doing and possibly thinking, again, through the thoughts of the narrator:

"Then she turns to her blonde friend and they laugh, as if we'd taken some kind of bait."

And there's also via dialogue, which can also be used to give some information from the past, though more in the line of the action, as opposed to from somebody's recollection:

"'Holy shit,' he says. '1979 Pontiac Phoenix. This was my first ride.'" (from Chris).

Each of these, and there are others, just not from the first page of this short story, have their reasons for being used. The current through the narrator's thoughts is a simple and easy way to catch the reader up to what is going on and get the story started. Some of that information from the past can be filled in through the current action (Chris pointing out the girls are driving in the same model as his original car) and other material from the past, if it's necessary for the reader to know, might need to be dropped in through the narrator's thoughts if there's no clean way of doing so in the current action. It seems most frequently this type of information will be useful as a bit of foreshadowing that maybe could have been slipped in through current action later in the work, but then it might seem almost too conveniently brought up.

I think Chamberlin has made great choices with all of these examples and again, hope to see this story in a full collection in the future if this, again, his FIRST, is any indication of what other stories he's written might be like.